The Killing Game (6 page)

He knew how that worked.

So he’d cursed the filthy slut, made a promise to never visit that rat-trap of a bar again, and set out to find relief in a prostitute. Whores weren’t as satisfying as hunting your own women, but whores did pretty much what you wanted and never asked questions about where you worked and what movies and restaurants you liked and all that ridiculous shit. They sure as hell didn’t insult and lie to you. And they never wanted to kiss.

The light at the upcoming intersection turned red. Gregory saw no other vehicles near, no reason to stop. He passed a small corner bar, wondering why the bar’s neon lights seemed to fill his vehicle. No, not the bar’s lights, he realized … the blue-and-white flashers of a cop car on his bumper. Gregory pulled beneath a streetlamp, anger curdling in his belly. Goddamn cops … people getting robbed and shot all over Mobile and here they were, bothering him.

Gregory squinted into the rearview and saw two faces in the flashing lights, the passenger-side face obscured by a brown bag. Was the cop drinking? A cop in his twenties exited the driver’s seat, putting on his cap and walking toward Gregory’s car. The other cop leaned on his open door and watched.

“I need to see license and registration, sir,” the young cop said.

“What did I do?” Gregory sighed.

The cop said, “License and registration.”

Was the cop a parrot?
It was a simple question, so Gregory repeated it, enunciating each word carefully.

“What – did – I – do?”

“Hey, asshole,” the older cop barked. “Do like you’re goddamn told.”

Gregory felt his anger ratchet up a level, but caught himself.
It’s a routine traffic stop,
he reminded himself
. Just one more moronic ritual. Put on the faces of concern.

“I’m sorry. What’s this about, officer?” Gregory handed over his license as a small crowd gathered to watch, drawn to the flashing lights. Gregory saw three whores plus two bone-skinny guys in outsize white tees and sideways ball caps and two grinning old drunks from the corner bar. More gawkers were pushing out the door.

The young cop shone his flashlight in Gregory’s eyes, blinding him. The world turned white, like a sea of snow. The whiteness condensed into a ball that tolled back and forth like a bell. Gregory could actually
hear
the flashlight.

“What is the light, Grigor?” the cop said.

Gregory’s mouth fell open. His heart turned to ice. It seemed as if time stopped.

“Uh, what did you say?”

“What are you doing here this time of night?” the cop said.

Gregory blinked. The young cop was staring from behind the flashlight, now scanning the rear of the car. The light returned to his face.

“I asked you a question, sir,” the cop repeated. “Why are you here this time of night?”

“I couldn’t sleep, officer,” Gregory replied quietly, though his jaw was tight with anger. “I was driving to relax.”

“Get him outta the car, Mailey,” the older cop bayed. “I wanna look at him.”

“Step out of the car please,” the young cop said, pulling the door open as though Gregory was some kind of criminal.

“Is there a reason why I—”

Again the sound of the damned light. Gregory winced.

“GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE GODDAMN CAR!” the older cop yelled. Gregory exited his vehicle and stood with his hands at his side. The audience on the sidewalk started laughing as though this was a show they’d seen before. The older cop walked toward Gregory, the younger several steps behind. Gregory felt a rumble in his belly. For one strange and breathless second, the cops seemed to split into two pairs, one team walking left, the other walking right.

Behind him, someone said, “What happened next?” Gregory turned and saw only the giggling whores. When he turned back, the big cop had reappeared a foot from Gregory’s face. His uniform seemed to pulse and shimmer in the soft light, like it was woven from dreams.

“Breeeep,” the older cop said.

“What?” Gregory said, frowning.

Gregory felt a sharp poke in his side, looked down to see a shining black nightstick.

“Breathe, dammit. Like I just told you.”

Gregory heard gas bubbling in his intestines. A voice in his head said,
Your guts are upset, Grigor; be careful.
He exhaled. The cop stuck his nose in the outflow, made a big deal out of grimacing. The onlookers giggled. They had moved closer.

“His breath stinks, Mailey,” the cop grinned. “But I don’t smell booze.” He turned back to Gregory. “Only two reasons people come down here at night, mister. Drugs and pussy. Which one are you after?”

The whores giggled and chanted, “
Pus-sy, pus-sy
…” It was almost like they were singing. Gregory felt a trembling in his guts, moving lower. He heard squirting noises, bubbling.

“I’m not looking for a woman,” he lied, “and I don’t use drugs.”

“
Pussy
…
pussy
…”

The older cop grinned and waved the girls into silence. “Check inside his pretty car, Mailey.”

The young cop stepped close. His uniform was glowing in the light. “You don’t mind if I take a look inside your vehicle, do you,
sir
?”

Gregory was seething but forced a nonchalant shrug. The pressure in his belly was starting to hurt.

“Suit yourself, officer.”

The cop leaned into the car, patting beneath the seats, opening the glove box, pulling down the visors.

“Can I go now?” Gregory asked the older cop. His words seemed to come out half-sized and plaintive, like those of a frightened child.

“I say when you can go,
sir
,” the cop said, tapping Gregory’s shoulder with the black baton. “But I haven’t said that yet, have I? Check the back seat, Mailey.”

The young cop leaned into the rear, sliding his fingers between and underneath the cushions, reaching into the seatback pouches. He retreated holding a glossy magazine. Gregory felt his insides slosh and grind as the pain grew sharper.

“What is it, Mailey?” the old cop asked.

The cop named Mailey held up a page opened to a shot of a naked woman hanging upside down in chains, black clothespins clamped to her nipples and a red ball gag filling her mouth. Gregory stared in horror: How had he left the magazine in his car?

“It’s one of them pervert magazines, Horse,” the young cop said. “Something called
Women in Agony
.”

“Freak!” one of the women yelled, a gold incisor glinting.

The older cop pulled reading glasses from his pocket. “Lemme see.”

“I purchased that legally,” Gregory stammered, feeling a hot cascade through his intestines. He clenched his sphincter. “There’s … nothing wrong … with it.”

“You’re a freak!” the woman yelled again. The others took up the chant. “
Freak, freak, freak
…”

The young cop handed the magazine to the older one, who shook his head and
tsk
-ed through pages, reading glasses perched on the bulbous tip of his nose. “You like to tie ladies up, sir?” he asked in mocking sincerity. “Put those rubber balls in their mouths?”

The drunks joined in the chorus. “
Freak, freak
…” They were getting louder and louder. Gregory couldn’t answer the cop, his intestines were squirming like cut worms. He felt his control slipping away.

“You know, if you jam rubber balls in their mouths,” the cop grinned
,
“it doesn’t leave room for your dick.”

“
Freak, freak
…”

“I really … need to…”

“You need to shut the fuck up and stand still,” the cop said, tapping Gregory’s belly with the stick. He went back to turning pages and
tsk-
ing loudly.

What happened next?

Gregory felt his bowels explode, a hot flood filling his pants and sliding down his legs. The stink rose as the liquid fell. The cop stared at Gregory’s pants, his eyes following the stain to the pavement.

“Christ, Mailey,” the cop laughed, “the pervert just shit himself.”

The audience exploded into hoots and catcalls. Several onlookers began chanting
Shit boy.
One of the drunks started a rap in the middle of the street, grabbing at his crotch and pointing at Gregory. “
Look at the boy with his face inna trance, got shit dripping down the legs of his pants
…”

The cop named Horse didn’t seem to walk toward Gregory, but simply appeared in front of him like magic, a tower of threatening blue, his grin fierce and horrific. The cop put his huge callused hand over Gregory’s face and pushed him backward toward his car. He stumbled several steps before his legs tangled and he fell to the ground. When he tried to regain his legs, the cop’s big foot came down on Gregory’s chest and pushed him to the pavement, back into his own filth. The chorus of catcalls and laughter almost deafening, the big cop leaned over Gregory, grabbed his collar and jammed the magazine in the front of his shirt.

“You stink like a sewage factory, poopy,” the cop laughed as he stood and pulled his boot from Gregory’s chest. “Go home and learn how to use a toilet.”

What happened next?

“
You know, if you jam rubber balls in their mouths, it doesn’t leave room for your dick.
”

Gregory screamed and kicked the pail of soapy water across the floor of his garage. It was useless to try and clean his car seat. The brown stain had not only set, it spread as he rubbed with the detergent solution.

“
You stink like a sewage factory, poopy. Go home and learn how to use a toilet.
”

Gregory had nearly crashed twice on his return, once driving through a stop sign, the second time almost missing a curve. His drive took him past Ema’s house and for some wild reason he pulled into her driveway, wanting to go to her door, make up an excuse, anything,
anything.

Help me, Ema. I’m sick.

It was as if he saw himself walking her drive with his face contorted in misery, his body reeking of itself as his nails scratched in agony at her door. But no, that couldn’t have happened. Because when Ema’s lights came on at the sound of a car, Gregory had panicked, cutting the steering wheel and flooring the accelerator, whipping into a U-turn across Ema’s yard and back into the street, his heart wild in his throat.

What happened next?

Home minutes later, Gregory had torn off his clothes – designer khakis, linen shirt, silk socks, Italian walking shoes – jamming everything inside a garbage bag, and another and another, until a dozen bags surrounded the disgraced clothes. He’d showered until the water ran cold.

Gregory howled and kicked the pail again, sending it into a rack of rakes and brooms. They tumbled from the wall, clattering to the concrete.

I will kill them both
,
Gregory thought, kicking aside the implements as he paced inside the hot and reeking garage, hands wet with shit-stained water.
C
ut out their eyes. Slash their bellies and pack them with starving rats .
. .
nail their ballsacks to a tree and snip their
carotids with pruning shears
…

Harry and I were in early the next morning. I called Hernandez and filled him in on what we’d discovered. “Have you had any other instances of animal bodies lately?” I asked. “Tortured, I mean.”

“None. Same for the rest of the folks in the department. I’m not including neglect, a kind of torture, but…”

“Yeah. This was methodical and likely the highlight of this freak’s day.”

“Could you stake out the bridge?” Hernandez asked.

“We don’t have the manpower. And the pathologist is fairly certain the carcasses had been frozen. The perp probably froze the cats when he was, uh, finished with them. So he may well have driven across the bridge just the once.”

“Uh, listen, Detective Ryder … I did some reading on the Internet. I’m sure you know that people who torment animals can a lot of times turn into, uh…”

“Yep,” I said. “I know.”

I hung up and heard a throat being cleared. I turned to see a pretty young woman three paces back wearing a light summer dress with a backpack slung over a bare shoulder. “Hello, Miz Holliday,” I said. Harry turned, his eyes lighting as always when he saw a lovely woman.

“We’ve studied several of your cases, Detective Nautilus,” Holliday said after I’d made introductions. “Detective Ryder is always talking about you.”

Harry raised an eyebrow my way.

“It’s the other Harry Nautilus,” I said. “The pretty one.”

Harry shot me a strange grin and stood. “I’m gonna pull some uniforms to canvass the block below Bienville,” he said, referring to a current case.

“What brings you to HQ, Wendy?” I asked.

“Our class in police administration heard lectures from administrators. Departmental structure, chain of command, work flow, efficiency analysis, public outreach—”

“Did you manage to stay awake?”

“Let’s just say I’ll take one of your classes any day.”

“Very diplomatic. Chief Baggs … did he talk to the class?”

“We saw his office. His secretary said he was busy.”

I pressed my fingers to my temples and closed my eyes like a Las Vegas mentalist. “Something about the Mayor, right?” I divined.

“How did you know?”

I winked. “I’m a detective, Wendy. I detect. Where’s the rest of the class?”

“Dismissed a few minutes ago.”

“And up you snuck.”

“I was just going to peek through the door. Then I saw you and Detective Nautilus. And, uh, sort of kept walking.”

“Here’s the homicide floor. Peek away.”

She turned to look across the room, a full floor of cubicle offices. I almost avoided lowering my eyes past the knee-top hem for a mental photograph of the long, sun-browned legs, the slight front bow of her shins perfectly complementing the swell of calf.

“It seems kind of dark compared to the other floors,” she noted, turning my way as my head snapped up.

“Good catch,” I said, hoping she hadn’t caught me ogling. “When the building was put up, before my time, the latest in high-intensity ceiling lights were installed. Within two weeks the dicks had removed the fluorescent bulbs and brought in floor and desk lamps, creating an atmosphere better suited to solving mortal crimes.”