Game of Death (23 page)

‘I think you have,’ I say. ‘Is that all?’

The smile disappears. ‘For now,’ he says. ‘But you should bear in mind what we have talked about here, and previously. You hold the future of all of those at the company in
your hands. You must consider what the future will be as you move forward.’

‘I will,’ I say. ‘You can count on that.’

I stop by Tom Jackson’s office on the floor below before I leave the building. I trust Tom, and I’ve always been grateful to him for bringing me into the company.
I’m hoping that he may be able to give me an unbiased perspective.

He is sitting at his desk, tapping away on his computer when I poke my head through the door. ‘You got a minute?’ I ask.

He looks up. ‘Nick,’ he says. ‘Of course.’

‘You working on the revenue generation?’

He smiles as he nods. ‘Always. Not the easiest task.’

‘No, I’m sure.’ I’m not sure where to start. ‘Tom, you know I’ve always appreciated what you did for me – bringing me in, making sure Ma was taken care
of, all of it.’

‘You don’t need to thank me, Nick,’ Tom says. ‘I brought you in because I knew you’d help the company. I was right; you’ve proved that over the past four
years.’

I sigh. ‘There may be some who disagree at this point.’

‘The investigation?’

I nod. ‘I’m trying to do what’s right.’

He smiles. ‘You’ve always been better than any of us at that.’

‘But what if that leads me into places that are no good for the company?’

‘I’m not sure what you mean.’

I wave a hand in dismissal. ‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘I don’t mean anything. Listen, there was one question that I wanted to ask you. One of the girls who appears in
De
Sade
’s LifeScenes is named Kendra Madison.’ Tom sits up straight at the mention of her name. ‘She said you were friends.’

Tom looks around, as though worried that someone might be listening in to our conversation. ‘I don’t know that I would call us friends,’ he says.

‘Don’t worry, Tom, I already know about her and Pinkerton. I just wanted your view on what happened between the two of them. Josh says that she was into kinky violence. She says that
he got out of line with her, and that you stepped in and helped her. I’m just curious for your perspective. It would be helpful.’

Tom shakes his head. ‘I’m not comfortable talking about that,’ he says. ‘He’s my boss, and she’s . . . ’ he pauses. ‘Well, you’ve met her. I
tried to help both of them. I’m still not sure I succeeded.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Like I say, I’m not comfortable talking about it.’

He and I sit in silence for a moment. ‘Okay,’ I say at last. ‘I get it.’ I stand up and walk to the door.

‘Nick,’ he says before I can leave. I turn and look at him. ‘You need to help the police track down the person who is doing these terrible things to these women.’

‘I’m trying,’ I say.

‘Nick,’ he says, his voice full of emphasis. ‘I mean it. No matter where it leads, no matter what it takes. Do you understand me?’

‘I’m not sure I do.’

‘Whoever this is, he’s going to keep doing it. We’ve provided a doorway for people to explore their darkest sides, and someone has walked through that door. He’s gotten
lost on the other side, and I don’t think he’s coming back. It’s something I’ve worried about from the beginning of this company. So many people are unhappy with their
lives, and then they find another life where they can be someone totally different. If you were that unhappy, would you come back?’

I think about it for a moment. ‘Maybe not.’

‘Now do you understand why he needs to be caught?’

I nod to him silently and walk out of his office.

When I get back to the office in Cambridge, my head is pounding. It’s too much information for me to absorb, and none of it seems to make sense. I’m hoping that
Yvette has found something that will bring clarity to it all, but those hopes are dashed when I see her face.

‘I think I’m close, but I’m not there yet,’ she says, her frustration evident.

‘How long will it take?’

‘I don’t know, Nick,’ she snaps. It’s clear that she’s going to need some rest soon, or she’ll collapse. I don’t care how strong she is, no one can keep
going at this pace. ‘I don’t even know whether what I’m doing will work. I’ve written a program that should collect all the bits and packets that make up any LifeScenes that
match
De Sade
’s profile and reside on the system, so anything that was created on a drive that is connected to the company should be found, but there’s no guarantee that
it’s gonna work. And even if it does, I don’t know that I’m gonna be able to put them back together in any way that’ll be useful.’

‘But you’ll be able to identify which computer on the system was used to create the Scenes?’

‘If I’m right, and they were created on the system, then yes, theoretically that information should be there. But I could be wrong.’

‘Well, if you’re wrong, I’m not sure where we go from there. We don’t have any information about this asshole that will lead us to him.’

‘I was thinking about that,’ Yvette says. ‘It’s not really true. We actually have a fair amount of information.’

‘Like what?’

‘Well, we know what he’s done to these girls. And we know that he’s chosen
De Sade
as his username.’

‘That doesn’t seem like much,’ I say.

‘Maybe not,’ she admits, ‘but you never know. After my computer program started running and I had a moment to breathe, I started trying to put myself in this guy’s
mind.’

‘Jesus, you really need to get some rest.’

‘I’m serious,’ she says. ‘I started trying to figure out what’s motivating this guy. Why is he doing what he’s doing? What’s the logic behind
it?’

‘You think there’s logic behind this?’

‘I think
De Sade
thinks there’s logic to it. These killings are stylized. They’re detailed and carefully planned. So the question is: what do these murders do for this
guy? What do they get him?’

I think about this for a moment, but I can’t think of anything other than that he’s a psycho who gets off on murder. ‘I’ve got nothing. You think you can figure it
out?’

‘Not yet. But I figured the more information we have, the better, so I did a little research on the real Marquis de Sade. I thought maybe that would lead us somewhere.’

‘What did you learn?’

‘A lot. I’m just not sure what it means. He was born in 1740 in France, and lived most of his life in Paris. He was a writer, philosopher and politician. When he was in his thirties
he became known for a hedonistic way of life. He used to pay prostitutes to let him abuse them, and he would often take advantage of his servants.’

‘Pinkerton apparently abused Kendra Madison,’ I say.

‘If you believe her. How do you know that she’s telling the truth?’

‘He confirmed it. He says that it’s what she wanted – what she liked – and he just got dragged into it, but he admitted to me that he did get into that kind of scene with
her when they were together. Maybe that was just the start. Maybe he decided that he liked it, and he wanted to take it further.’

‘It’s possible,’ Yvette says. ‘De Sade was rich, just like Pinkerton. That’s how he got away with what he did for so long. He was able to pay people off, and keep
people quiet. Maybe that’s what Josh was trying to do with Kendra Madison.’

‘What else did you learn?’

‘Well, eventually De Sade’s luck ran out and he was arrested. He spent a bunch of time in prisons and insane asylums. He was in the Bastille for six years, from 1784 through 1790. He
was there when he wrote
The One Hundred and Twenty Days of Sodom
. That was his masterpiece – a 700-page story about four middle-aged men who exile themselves to a castle with
forty-six victims and spend four months engaging in escalating degeneracy. They hire four women – brothel-keepers – to document all of the twisted things they do.’

‘So who are the brothel-keepers here?’ I ask idly.

‘Maybe NextLife is all he needs. The system documents what he’s doing; maybe that’s all he wants.’

‘Maybe. What happens in the book?’

‘The sexual violence gets worse and worse, and more depraved with each consecutive month. Eventually they slaughter all of their victims. The things that De Sade describes in the book
sound even worse than what our boy has done.’

‘What sorts of things?’

‘They flay the skin off their victims; they tear out their intestines and set them on fire; they use hot pokers to torture their victims in various different orifices. Things like
that.’

‘Lovely. Let’s hope this bastard doesn’t go that far.’

‘You never know; the violence in the book apparently gets more and more brutal.’

‘Did you come up with any connections that could be drawn with Gunta?’

Yvette shakes her head. ‘Nothing that I could see. Though it’s interesting that, even if we think the good doctor is gay, that wouldn’t rule him out. The forty-six victims in
the book are a combination of boys and girls, and De Sade himself apparently swung both ways. He was first jailed for sodomy with one of his valets.’

‘What ended up happening to him?’

‘He had an interesting life. He lived through the French Revolution, and was actually released from prison and elected to the French parliament for the ultra-liberal party. He was in the
government during the Reign of Terror. When Napoleon came into power, he ordered De Sade to be jailed again, and his family arranged to have him transferred to an insane asylum and eventually
released into exile on one of his estates. He spent the last eight years before his death having an ongoing, physically punishing affair with a girl that started when she was thirteen.’

‘How old was he?’

‘He was seventy-four.’

I shake my head in disbelief. ‘And he was abusing a thirteen-year-old?’

‘That’s what the history books say.’

‘What a sick fuck.’

Yvette nods. ‘A brilliant fuck, too, though. He started the entire amoralist movement. People who took some level of inspiration from him included people like Friedrich Nietzsche and
Sigmund Freud. Some historians trace existentialism back to him. Even Simone de Beauvoir, the feminist, relies on De Sade for some of her thinking. She wrote that his views on women were actually
far more egalitarian than traditional religious doctrine.’

‘Tell that to the women he tortured.’ I look at Yvette. ‘You don’t buy any of this as a genuinely legitimate philosophy, do you?’

‘Amoralism?’ She stares at the wall for a moment. ‘Not really, but I understand the attraction. I grew up watching the way the Church viewed morality. The heads of the Church
sat on their hands as children were molested – they transferred abusive priests from parish to parish as they denied that anything was happening. I had a friend who was molested when he was
thirteen; he was so afraid to tell anyone, he swore me to secrecy. He thought there was something wrong with him – thought it was his fault, because that’s what he was taught.’
She sighs heavily. ‘He killed himself when he was nineteen. After that, it just seemed to me that the people I grew up thinking had moral superiority had no real legitimacy, so I figured
everything was bullshit. I gave up on morality, and I just started doing my own thing – going by my own compass. I guess I believe morality exists; I just think it can be hard to
find.’

‘Do you have trouble finding it?’

‘I do,’ she says absently. She seems to shake herself and looks at me again. ‘I’ve figured out enough to know that whoever is doing this to these women is a bad, bad
person, and we have to stop him.’

As I nod, my cellphone rings. The caller ID is a number I don’t recognize and I consider letting it go to my voicemail, but decide against it. I hit the answer button and hold the phone up
to my ear. ‘Hello?’

‘Is this Nick?’ I recognize Kendra Madison’s voice instantly, and for a moment I think perhaps I’m having a dream.

‘Yes, this is Nick.’

‘Do you know who this is?’

I hesitate. ‘Yes,’ I say at last.

‘I need to talk to you.’

‘How did you get this number?’

‘Information.’

‘It’s unlisted.’

‘Will you meet me?’

I’m not sure what to say. I know that Killkenny will be pissed if I meet her, and I recognize that my objectivity is probably compromised by my obsession with the girl. I understand that
it would be smart for me to avoid talking to her, and it’s clearly a bad idea for me to see her in person. ‘Yes,’ I respond. ‘Where do you want to meet?’

‘There’s a bar just off Warren Street. The Anchor. It’s close to your house. Is that okay?’

‘How do you know where I live?’

She ignores the question again. ‘When can you meet me?’

I look at my watch and see that it’s closing in on five o’clock. ‘How about six?’

‘That’s perfect. I’ll see you then.’ The line goes dead. I take the phone away from my ear and stare at it briefly, wondering whether the phone call actually happened. It
doesn’t seem to make sense.

Yvette is watching me. ‘Who was that?’

‘One of Ma’s doctors,’ I lie.

‘Everything okay?’

‘I guess I’ll find out. I’m meeting with him. Actually, Ma seemed better than I’ve seen her in ages today. Cormack stopped by, and she got all dolled up. It was a little
freaky, actually.’

Yvette raises an eyebrow. ‘You think there’s something going on?’

‘Maybe. I’m trying not to think about it.’

‘Good for her.’

‘She’s sick.’

‘Sick isn’t dead,’ Yvette says. ‘If she can squeeze a little more pleasure out of life, why shouldn’t she?’

‘She’s my mother.’ I look at my watch. ‘I have to go.’

She nods. ‘Me too. It’s gonna take a while for my program to run, so I’m going home to take a shower, maybe even lie down for a little while. I must look like crap.’

She’s been up for two days, so she should look terrible, but she doesn’t. Her eyes are clear, and whatever makeup she might have put on when she came to work forty-eight hours ago is
long gone, but she’s always looked better without makeup, I realize. I smile at her. ‘You look okay.’