The Killing Game (20 page)

We stepped into a room smelling of stale beer, cigarettes, and last-night’s vomit, waiting out a worrisome moment of semi-blindness until our eyes adjusted to the dim light. There were maybe a dozen bodies in attendance, mostly male, a couple women. Most were in booths to the rear, two men clicking pool balls across a table.

“There’s our boy,” I said, nodding to a leather-covered back hunched over the bar, a shot and a Dixie longneck before him. A red bandana wrapped his skull, greasy strands of hair snaking down his neck. Scaggs was alone, maybe composing Elizabethan sonnets in his mind. I walked over, Harry right behind me.

“How’s it going, Norb?” I said.

His head craned around and his red eyes stared. “Ryder? What the fuck are you doing here?”

I nodded at the pile of beer-soaked change at his elbows, coins and a few sodden bills. “Got some pennies there, Norbert. Anyone in mind?”

“What?”

“Like on YouTube, right?
Random Nightmares
?”

The eyes tightened to slits. “What the fuck are you talking about, Ryder? Get away from me. You ruined my life.”

“Three years of prison ruined your life, Norbert? It was the easiest a jerk-off like you ever had it … free food, free bunk, and all the twinks you could poke. Or maybe your life was ruined from the day you slid out of your mama. Probably kept her from turning tricks for an hour.”

Scaggs’s eyes blazed, but he said nothing. Scaggs’s biker buddies were fine-tuned to us now, standing. The two greasebags at the pool table moved closer, cues in hand. Harry opened his jacket to show an edge of shoulder holster.

“Private conversation,” he said. “Sit down and tend to your business.”

I put my hand on the bar and leaned close to Scaggs. “You never liked blacks and gays, Norbert. I got that. But what about the girl, what did you have against her? Getting an education? Was that it? Or maybe she made your pecker hard and you knew she was eighty worlds above you.”

“Girl? I don’t know nothing ’bout what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you do, Norb. We got prints at the house on Blake Road, the Lampson place.”

“Fingerprints?”

I wiggled my fingers in his face. “Clear as the stars on a winter night.” Scaggs was a loosely wrapped collection of dirty thoughts and erratic impulses, and I hoped to push any button that would give me a reaction.

He grinned into my eyes. “Stop busting my balls. You got something on me, show it.”

I leaned lower, my mouth almost in his ear. “Don’t like cops either, do you, Norb?” I said. “Me in particular? Maybe you’ve been out long enough you figured to take your shot at me. It’s chickenshit, Norbie. You got a problem with me, you come to me. Or does direct action give you the shivers?”

“I got a lawyer you can talk to,” Scaggs said. He turned away and emptied the beer glass. “But you know that, don’t you?” He fake-yawned, closed his eyes and pretended to fall into a doze. It appeared he’d learned restraint the past few years.

I felt a tug on my sleeve, saw Harry nodding toward the door,
We’re done here
. Scaggs chuckled wetly and I felt like bouncing his face off the bar. Instead I said something stupid along the lines,
We’re watching you.

Crossing the lot, we heard jeering laughter from inside. When we got to the car a door opened behind us and I turned to see Scaggs grinning from the shadows.

“Sounds like someone’s got a personal beef with you, Ryder,” he called.

“Leave it be, Carson,” Harry said quietly.

“They digging in your head?” Scaggs continued. “There every time you try and sleep?”

“Let’s roll,” Harry said. I walked around to the passenger side, slid into the cruiser.

“But you don’t know how it’s gonna end, do you? Hell, Ryder, you don’t even know who it is, right? Not a clue.”

Harry put the car in gear, started away. I shot a glance at Scaggs, his hair hanging in filthy ringlets, his middle finger upthrust, a victorious grin on his ugly face.

“How does it feel to be on the other side, Ryder?” he yelled.

Harry pulled into the street and looked into the rearview. “Jesus, I think I got plague just from breathing in there. How many more times we gonna have to do this, Carson?”

I thought of the files stacked on my desk. Even if one in twenty needed to be checked, it was…

“A lot,” I said, closing my eyes and slumping low in the seat.

Harriet Ralway was in the air inside a tire. She could smell the warm rubber as her arms hugged the black circle. The ground passed by below her, back and forth, the red clay exposed by thousands of foot-scrapings. The tire hung on a yellow rope from the thick horizontal limb of an old live oak in her front yard. Her daddy had made the tire swing just for Harriet and her sister, Odelia. Odelia was eleven, four years older than Harriet.

Harriet did the math as she pumped her legs and made the swing push higher into the warm south Georgia sunlight. Harriet was seven years old.

That made the year 1943.

“Harriet,
Mama
, Harriet…” Odelia called. Harriet turned to the sound and there was Odelia floating right in front of her. Was Odelia flying? How did she do that?

“
Mama?
”

“You have to wait your turn, Deel,” Harriet lectured Odelia. “I just got in the swing. It’s my turn.”

Odelia frowned and flew away, over the tree and into the woods at the edge of the yard. “My turn,” Harriet giggled.

But as fast as she’d gone, Odelia was back, her face as near as if she were in the swing with Harriet.

“
Mama
,” the voice said again. No, not Odelia. Who was that voice? “
Mama, it’s me
…”

Odelia melted away, replaced by another face. It was so familiar, it was—

“Mama, it’s me, Patricia. Your daughter, remember?”

The tire swing dissolved, making a musical note like a chime as it vanished. Harriet felt her feet touch the ground and she was off balance, falling backward into white. A pillow surrounded her head, crisp and cool. The air suddenly smelled less of grass and more of liniment. Harriet studied the face before her. Round, with ringlets of bright blonde hair. She held up her hand and felt another hand clasp her fingers, hold them gently. It felt good.

“Patricia?” Harriet whispered. “Is that you, girl?”

“Yes, Mama, it’s me. I’m right here by your bed.”

Harriet felt a wave of sorrow pass through her body. It was as if she’d become surrounded by pictures from a long time ago. She had to push at them to make them retreat, but they never seemed to go far. Sometimes it seemed they were painted inside her eyelids, there every time she closed her eyes.

“Hi, baby,” she said, squeezing back at the hand around hers, feeling its strength and affection. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what, Mama?”

“I got confused again. I thought you were Odelia.”

“You weren’t confused, Mama. You were just dreaming. You always know who I am.”

“Just dreaming?” Harriet said, taking in the small room, her bed, the television on a table by the wall. The photos push-pinned into a cork board.

“Everybody dreams, Mama. You were dreaming of Odelia.”

Harriet saw a dark hearse and smelled fresh dirt.

“She’s dead, isn’t she?”

“Yes, Mama. Aunt Deelie passed a dozen years back.”

A tall black woman in white went by the door, stopped, looked inside. Harriet forced thoughts to the front of her head. The woman’s name was Selma. She was a nurse. She was nice.

“Howdy, Miss Harriet,” the nurse named Selma said. “How you doin’ this lovely morning?”

“I’m good, Selma. I was dreaming again.”

Harriet saw Selma pass a look to Patricia, then a broad smile. “You’re a lucky woman, Miss Harriet, to have a daughter like Patricia here to care for you almost every day.”

“She’s my baby,” Harriet said, new thoughts flooding her head. “I took care of her, now she takes care of me.”

“We take care of each other, Mama,” Patricia said, leaning in to kiss Harriet’s brow.

“Are you crying, Odelia?” Harriet asked. “Are those tears in your eyes?”

It was past six when I dropped Harry at his car and headed home, too worn out to think any more. It was a quiet drive to the Island, me trying to figure who might be insane enough to murder people to get back at me. Since we moved as a team, Harry was probably making his own list, though I tended to make more enemies, by and large.

The worst problems arose from two primary quarters, Honor and Madness. The first, honor, was big with gang types. Having nothing normal people would claim as worthy, they develop honor codes as a gauge for self-worth, always using hyper-inflated currency. People who’ve never done anything remotely respectable bristle at the slightest signs of disrespect from others.

Dissing
someone, in gang parlance, could get you killed, probably by a twenty-year-old dropout who sells drugs, fathers children he doesn’t acknowledge, beats his girlfriends, steals anything within reach, all the while ignoring and evading every attempt to bend him toward becoming a productive member of the human coalition.

Yet somehow his sensitivities are so finely tuned that if you look sideways at him, he’ll shoot you dead in the street to assert his honor.

The other side is more nebulous: madness. I figure of every thousand human beings, sixty are broken beyond repair from a psychological standpoint. Twenty go to prison by their mid-twenties and stay in or near the penal system. Ten become their own victims, homeless, drug or alcohol-ravaged, institutionalized for hallucinations, or they sit in a corner of a relative’s home and melt into components.

This leaves a pool of thirty souls. They hold jobs, appear to be decent neighbors, speak normally on the street. But closed doors find them hunched over the vilest of pornography, or imagining ugly things to do to people of different gender, racial make-up, or contrary political views. Most stay wrapped up, their inner torments rarely breaching the containment vessel. Some are undoubtedly sociopathic, but aren’t physically violent, instead manipulating those closest to them, stealing company funds, running Ponzi schemes, and so forth.

Five of these people eventually act out in a violent and generally unforeseen emotional explosion, often injuring others in the process. They reach some kind of limit and combust.

Two simply disappear. No one will know where they went, ever.

The final one is the person who not only manages his or her sickness, but draws strength from the disease, becoming more and more twisted, yet simultaneously stealthy in its concealment. These distillations of human misery are invariably megalomaniacal, their sense of self-worth inflated past all limit. They view social and cultural structures as barriers to their development, but become exceptionally adept at fitting in, emotional chameleons who can jiujitsu others with a word or gesture.

Oddly enough, they hold something in common with the Honor types: insecure at their deepest, unacknowledged core, they can be sensitive to every slight. Insult or humiliate one of these people and you could create an enemy whose sole goal in life is your destruction. And you might never even know it until it was too late.

I aimed the headlights toward Dauphin Island, looking forward to retrieving Mix-up from my animal-activist neighbor, though she would gladly keep him a week if asked; he was her favorite pooch in a house holding six dogs, three cats, and one strutting, Napoleonic parrot. But I was feeling neglectful and guilty about my late hours.

Still, my recent overnight respite with Clair played warmly through my head. I had to go home, but I didn’t have to go home alone. I picked up my cell, dialed her directly.

“Hi, Clair. You home or at the shop?”

“Here I am surrounded by dead bodies. A girl’s lifelong dream, right?”

“I was thinking … how about I pick you up and we’ll head to the Island? We can grab ’cue or sandwiches on the way, sit on the deck and watch the water.” I lowered my voice. “Maybe take a moonlight swim.”

“Swim? But I don’t have a suit at your place, do I?”

“You’ve not needed one in the past,” I crooned. “At night, at least.”

“And moonlight doesn’t weigh as hard on an ageing body, does it?”

“Pardon me?”

“How’s young Miss Holliday? Will she be there?”

“What do you mean?”

“Two of the last four times I’ve seen you have been with her.”

“She’s a student, Clair. I’m trying to broaden her experience.”

“Broaden her experience? Is that what it’s called now? I’m so out of touch with youthful slang.”

Since the beginning the conversation had seemed off-kilter, like walking a path tipped three degrees sideways. But I suddenly saw things straight.

“Jesus, Clair, you think I’m, I’m, I’m…” I couldn’t find the right words.

“I’ve never heard you stutter before, Carson. You’re what?”

“Sleeping with her,” I finished.

“Sleeping with who, Carson?”

“Holliday.”

“You’re sleeping with Holliday?” Clair asked.

“NO! I didn’t say I
was
, I said I
wasn’t
.”

“I know you’re not,” Clair assured me. “She doesn’t have that look yet. How many times has Little Miss Christmas been to your home, Carson?”

“Once, Clair. She was biking in the neighborhood and briefly stopped in. A couple hours is all.”

“Two hours is brief? I think of two minutes as brief, two hours as—”

“It was perfectly innocent, Clair. She stopped by, showered, changed, then I made sandwiches and we—”

“My ears must be in terrible shape. I thought you said she showered.”

“Downstairs. She’d been biking, remember?”

“Vaguely. It’s my dimming geriatric mind.”

“Clair, the girl is eleven years younger than I am.”

“Lawd, eleven years. How much younger are you than I am, Carson?”

I mumbled something.

“I probably should look into hearing aids,” Clair said. “What did you say?”

“About eleven years. But that’s different. We’re, uh…”

“Older? Wiser?” she interrupted. “I am. Older, that is.”

“We’re friends, Clair. Wonderful friends.”