The Killing Game
J.A. Kerley

Dedication

To Alexa and John, Have a spectacular voyage

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Coming Soon: The Death Box

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

“It sounds like a helluva movie,” David Letterman was saying to the popular movie actor. “Great cast …”

Gregory leaned toward the foot-square mirror propped against the DVD player beside the television. The actor was performing the most complex series of faces Gregory had ever attempted. He reset the DVD to seconds before the faces began, when David Letterman asked his guest – who had a wife and three small children – about a rumored affair with his latest co-star.

“I guess I’d be remiss in my hostly duties if I didn’t ask about your relationship with your lovely co-star, Maria Glassier. You guys shared, uh, a love scene or two, right?”

The audience gasped, tittered, awaited the reply. Gregory pressed Play on the machine. The actor’s faces began …

Face one: the actor’s eyes popped wide. Gregory replicated the face in the mirror set atop the player. But this was a simple face he called Sudden Surprise #3 and employed dozens of times a week.

Face number two started, eyes moving side to side, rising at the corners as if swinging on pendulums, the mouth dropping open. Gregory tapped Pause. It was a difficult move, the eyes wanting to stutter instead of glide. And moving eyes couldn’t be followed in the mirror. But he’d practiced into a video camera until satisfied, so he trusted the face.

The last face was the toughest: four separate actions, but Gregory had deconstructed the components and mastered each. Today was about flow. Gregory felt his intestines squirming and reached to the floor for the bottle of Pepto-Bismol. He drank and restarted the player. The actor’s lips tightened, eyes rolling heavenward, eyebrows flicking, the head cocking to a thirty-degree angle.

Gregory’s first attempts felt ragged; the head-cock started before the lip-tightening, or he forgot the eyebrow lift after the eye-roll. Gregory’s jaw tightened in exasperation. The food in his guts turned into cramps and sour, flatulent gas. He smelled the ugly vapor from his bowels and began to shake in his chair, angered by failure …

Do Relaxed Face #1, he told himself. Then do Quiet Face.

Gregory took a deep breath and performed faces that relaxed him. His guts settled down. After a minute of visualizing, Gregory re-performed face three, nailing it five times in a row. Satisfied, he pressed Play.

The difficult faces were over. The actor’s smile widened until it eclipsed every other feature on his face.

“I’m afraid we’re just good friends, Dave,” the actor said.

The audience laughed and applauded. Gregory put his hand over the actor’s lower face. Without the distraction of the tooth-bright smile and uplifted cheeks, the actor’s eyes were points of angry fire. Gregory knew the actor wanted to grab Letterman’s throat and rip it from his body, holding the wet and dangling esophagus aloft like a prize. The actor had ached to do this since Letterman asked the moronic question, but instead projected a meticulous series of facial expressions ending in a glittering smile.

He fooled everyone.

And one day, Gregory thought, if the actor is a careful planner, he can track down and kill Letterman, and no one will ever know.

He turned off the DVD player. Gregory’s cell phone rang in his pocket and he pulled it out with irritation, saw the name EMA on the screen, her third call today. He stuck the phone back in his pocket and practiced facial moves as he left the room, its walls plastered with faces from magazine ads. Beneath each was a descriptor: Happy #4, Not Pleased With Someone’s Answer, New Car, Hurray!, I Love You #3 and over two hundred others. He rested his finger on the light switch and turned his eyes to his faces.

He showed them I’m Glad You’re Here and flicked out the light.

Chapter 2

The coins in the cash-register drawer jingled as I slammed it shut. The bleached-blond iron-pumper on the customer side of the counter started to turn away, but spun back to the lottery tickets beside the register, his guayabera shirt open to display a stunning collection of gold chains around a ham-thick neck. I’d just rung up his purchase of a pack of Marlboros, a half-case of Miller Lite and a three-pack of Trojan condoms. The beer was selling briskly tonight, thanks to a display of discounted twelve-packs fronting the nearest aisle. Condoms weren’t doing too bad either, but then it was Saturday night.

Ham Neck tapped the ticket dispenser. “Gimme four Hot Odds scratch-offs and a dozen Super Lottos.”

“You couldn’t think of that before I rang you up?”

His lamp-tanned face twisted into a snarl. “Here’s how it works, moron: I’m the customer, you’re the clerk. I want something, you shut up and get it for me.”

“Stay calm, Carson,” said a voice in my head as I bit my tongue and peeled tickets from the dispenser. I glanced up and barely registered a skinny guy in a grubby denim jacket turning down the first aisle. Outside, a teen kid who’d just bought condoms and two Dr Peppers climbed into what had to be Daddy’s white Yukon. The kid was grinning ear to ear, the girl looked uncertain.

Though it was forty minutes past midnight, outside the store it was as bright as high noon in the Sahara, a zillion watts lighting a dozen gasoline pumps on a half-acre of concrete. It was even brighter inside and on my first day I’d wondered if I needed sunscreen. There was an experienced manager on the shift – the three-hundred-sixty-pound Melvin Dobbs – but it was Mel’s break and he’d booked to a nearby Waffle House to give his diabetes something to think about.

“C’mon, hurry up with those tickets,” Ham Neck said. “I ain’t got all night.”

A shag-haired, net-hosed hooker by the coolers held up two forties of malt liquor.

“This all you got left of the Colt 45?”

“If that’s what you see,” I said, “that’s what we got.”

She shook her head. “How ’bout y’all stock this joint once inna while?”

I took Ham Neck’s money for the lottery tickets. He expressed appreciation by telling me the floors were filthy and did I know how a mop worked?

“Easy, Carson,” the voice said in my head.

Monitors from the security cameras sat to the right of the clerk station, two cameras inside, two outside. One was panning past the coolers and I saw the hooker opening her outsized purse, ready to drop a forty into it.

“Don’t even think about it, lady,” I yelled. She scowled and set the bottle back in the cooler. A seventyish black man in a blue porkpie hat was at the grill station, nodding at wrinkled brown hot dogs spinning on heated rollers.

“How long these weenies been cookin’?” he said.

I feigned uncertainty. “What year was the Crimean War?”

“The hell’s that mean?”

“Carson,” said the voice in my head. “Be nice.”

“About four hours,” I said.

“Can I get a discount cuz they’re so old?”

It was my second Saturday as a clerk working the midnight-to-morning shift. In the past six weeks there had been three Saturday-night convenience-store robberies, two ending in deaths. The third clerk was comatose, likely to remain that way. The C-stores had been just off I-10 on Mobile’s southwest side. This was the only one in the quadrant that hadn’t been robbed. My partner, Harry Nautilus, and I had judged it ripe for a hit.

“What about these weenies?” the porkpie-hat guy bayed. “They too old to be full price.”

I checked the outside monitors, seeing a gray van slide into the rear of the lot and disappear until it was picked up on the second outside camera. It rolled into the shadows beside the dumpster.

“Gray van,” said the voice in my head. “Get cautious.” A gray van had been spotted near two of the three hold-ups. Whenever one pulled in, the voice in my head alerted me to be careful.

“You got ten seconds to get out the door,” I told the old man. “But all the hot dogs you can grab in that time are free.”

The guy gave me two beats of are-you-for-real? then started jamming hot dogs in his pockets.

“Hey,” the hooker whined. “How ’bout me?”

“We’re having a special on malt liquor, ma’am. Two for the price of none.” I nodded toward the old guy. “But you gotta beat him out the door or the deal’s off.”

She grabbed the forties and booked, the old guy in her wake, two hot dogs in his mouth like pink cigars, four in each hand, a box of buns beneath his arm. Before the door closed it was caught in the hand of a petite brunette in her thirties: brown cargo pants, pink blouse, white running shoes. She saw me watching, waved and smiled and headed toward the snack aisle. She’d exited the gray van but my glance hadn’t picked up any threat. There were a lot of gray vans on the road.

“Check the customers,” the voice whispered. I did a head count. Exactly two people inside, me and the woman. The lot was empty. The woman came to the register with a bag of chips in one hand, flipping open a cheap cell with the other.

“Be a buck-eighty-seven,” I said.

She pressed a button on her phone and opened a brown leather purse. Though the woman had looked fine from afar, up close I saw hair days from a washing. Half-moons of grit under chewed fingernails. Pupils so dilated I couldn’t discern an eye color. I was moving my hand toward the weapon in the small of my back, beneath my uniform jacket, when I heard a shotgun rack behind me.

“Move and you’re dead,” a male voice said.

I froze as the woman across the counter pulled a black automatic from her purse. I knew the model: cheap Eastern-European manufacture with a trigger-pull so congenitally light it might fire if a mouse sneezed in the parking lot.

“Open the register,” she said, pointing the weapon at my throat. “Now.”

I nodded acquiescence and started tapping keys on the machine.

“Hold on,” the voice behind me whispered. “Some asshole comin’ in the door.”

I looked up and saw Ham Neck returning, straight-arming the door open. “You gave me the wrong goddamn cigarettes,” he snarled, waving the pack. “I told you menthol.”

The woman slid her purse up to cover the pistol and stepped to the side. The guy at my back whispered, “Get the fucker gone or you’re dead.” The gunman slipped to the end of the counter and I grimaced. It was the guy in the dirty denim jacket I’d noticed not five minutes ago. He must have waited in the restroom until the woman’s cell-phone signal told him the store was empty of customers.

My first job was getting the big buffoon out the door. I grabbed as many packs of smokes as I could hold, threw them Ham Neck’s way, one bouncing off his chin.

“They’re free,” I said. “Compensation for my mistake. Sorry. Goodbye.”

“You trying to be a wise-ass?”

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “My mistake. Please, take your smokes and go.”

But Ham Neck was one of those guys who look for slights. He strode toward me, one hand in a fist, the other thrust out and showing me the finger.

“Throw stuff at me? I oughta kick your goddamn—”

The man at the end of the counter whipped up a sawed-off twelve-gauge and fired. It sounded like a cannon. Ham Neck’s finger and hand disappeared in a red mist. He fell to the floor screaming, arterial blood spurting from his stump. The woman pulled the Czech weapon for the kill-shot. I stepped between them.

“I can open the safe,” I said, hands in the air. “There’s maybe three hundred bucks in the register. There’s at least six grand in the safe.”

She looked to Shotgun Man and he must have assented. Her eyes were unhinged, one fixed on me, the other on some hellish inner vision.

“Do it,” she said.

I nodded down at the moaning Ham Neck. “I gotta fix his arm.”

“I’ll kill you.”

“It’ll cost you over six thousand dollars.”

Her knuckles whitened on the gun, the chemicals in her head about to reach full boil.

“I can cut the lights and close down,” I reasoned. “We’ll be alone.”

Her eyes flicked to Shotgun Man. He thought about how many drugs six grand would buy and followed me to a panel behind the counter. I turned off every light outside and inside, leaving the glow from the coolers. Ham Neck was rolled in a ball and grunting as his stump painted the floor red. I could feel my gun against my back, but had two weapons trained on my head. No way to pull my piece.

I yanked a bungee cord from a display and snapped a tourniquet around Ham Neck’s forearm. He was slipping into shock. Move them to the front, the voice in my head said. I spun and walked to the front door.

“Stop right there.” The woman pointed the pistol at my forehead. It was shaking in her hand like a trapped bird.

“I have to lock the door,” I said, pulling my car keys. “The safe won’t open unless the front door is locked. You ever hear of an entry-securified safe before?”

The invention worked and she gestured me forward with the twitching muzzle of the nine.

“Wait,” Shotgun Man said. “Someone’s outside.”

A big square black guy in a Hawaiian shirt had parked beside the air pump and was kneeling by the front tire of a dark sedan. He looked unsteady and kept dropping the air hose.

“Just some drunk putting air in his tires,” I said, slipping my truck key into the lock and jiggling. I moved my hand back like I’d locked the door. Then pulled it open. “It’s bent,” I said, making a big deal of wiggling the door. “Some old lady banged her car into the door last week.” I did the key-jiggle again. Opened the door.

“GET IT DONE!” the woman screamed.

I turned to Shotgun Man. “If we both pull from the inside I can slide the bolt.”

He set the sawn-off on the counter and came to stand beside me. He smelled like an outhouse.

Shotgun Man looked to the woman. “He makes one wrong move, blow out his brains.”

“On the count of three,” I said. “Pull hard and I’ll set the lock.”

Shotgun Man gripped the door handle. I slid my key into the lock and shot a glance at the drunk at the pump. He was leaning against his vehicle and scratching his belly, apparently exhausted by his labors.

“One!” I said, loudly, taking a deep breath.

“Two!”

On three, I dove to the floor as glass exploded everywhere. Shotgun Man seemed to pirouette in slow motion, then hit the ground beside me. A half-beat later the woman’s body slammed the floor as well, half her skull gone. There was nothing to be done for either of them, but if there had been, I probably wouldn’t have done it.

Two cop cruisers skidded into the lot. The black guy was standing beside the car with a gun in his hand, smoke drifting from the muzzle. He spoke into a small transceiver in his palm. “Looks like your clerking career is over, Carson,” the voice in my head said. “You OK?”

I waved, pulled the tiny WiFi speaker from my ear, and ran to check on Ham Neck.

Chapter 3

The waitress brought Ema her breakfast and Gregory stared at the plate of unspeakable monstrosities. He hid his revulsion behind Happy #3 as the waitress smiled and backed away. Chewing food formed a bolus, a clot of spit and snot and food churned by the tongue and squeezed down the throat like a rat wriggling through a python. The bolus caused the stomach to squirm and convulse as chemicals reduced the lump to a suppurating goo. This reeking sludge was pumped past the pyloric valve and into the intestines, where it turned into unspeakable filth that decayed inside you for days.

“Are you all right, dear?” Ema asked as the server arrived with Gregory’s toast and salad. Grains and green vegetables were easiest to digest.

“Why?” he said.

Ema cocked her head, teased-out blonde curls bouncing on the shoulder of her pale and frilly summer frock.

“You looked deep in thought.”

Gregory pushed his plate of half-eaten toast aside. “Exactly, Ema, I was thinking. Until you interrupted.”

“I’m sorry,” Ema apologized. “Was it about work?”

“What else?” he lied. “I’ve put in forty hours already this week.” Another lie.

Ema forked up a gooey lump of poultry ovum. “I’m glad to see you so absorbed in life, dear. Plus you’re looking less thin and frail.”

Gregory’s eyes narrowed. Frail? I’ve never looked frail. Ema’s constant sniping about his pallor and thinness had driven Gregory to a health club membership four months back, but the stink of bodies turned his stomach and the music hurt his head. That’s when he’d invested in a top-of-the-line Bowflex home gym. He could run through a full workout in under a half hour and practice his faces at the same time.

He said, “I’ve been exercising.”

“Wonderful!” Ema chirped. “How often do you work out? Do you have a specific regimen?”

“Not really.”

“Do you exercise to a DVD or anything like that?”

“No.”

“You should drop in on Dr Szekely. She’d love to see how you—”

“Your nattering is driving me mad, Ema.”

Ema swallowed hard, looked away. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice breaking. “I only want for you to—”

“I’m teasing, dear,” Gregory said. “Can’t you tell by now when I’m teasing?”

“Sometimes you look, I don’t know … serious, I guess. Even when you’re teasing.”

“If you can’t tell whether I’m teasing, then I’m teasing.”

“I love you so much,” Ema said. “I want you to be healthy and strong.”

“I am healthy, Ema,” Gregory said. “I just said I’ve been working out. Didn’t you listen?”

Ema’s eyes fell to her lap, telling Gregory he’d failed to keep all the anger from his voice. He sighed internally and reached for his sister’s plump fingertips, feeling microbes crawl from her flesh to his. But the gesture – I Love You and I’m Sorry – was important. Gregory found his most sincere face – This is the Best Insurance You Can Buy – and looked Ema in her green eyes.

“I’m so glad I have you,” he said. “So very happy.” He followed with three beats of I Have a Powerful New Detergent.

A newly buoyant Ema carried the conversation for twenty minutes, Gregory’s contributions being murmurs of assent and smiling in all the right places. He averted his eyes when a fork moved toward Ema’s mouth, looking instead at the ubiquitous pendant hanging from her neck, a shimmering pearlescent orb the size of a robin’s egg, folk craft from Eastern Europe. She had other baubles on her wrists, jangly things. The woman spent her life watching shopping channels and soap operas and police shows. Gregory had started wishing she’d get a full-time job or some kind of hobby.

“How are the kitties?” Ema asked, returning to a recent topic, a population of stray cats in Gregory’s neighborhood.

“Still howling all night. It’s breeding season.”

Ema paused in chewing, the fork poised beside her mouth. “A friend of mine had a problem with stray cats. She caught them in what’s called a humane trap and—”

“What the hell is a humane trap?”

“It’s like a box made of wire mesh. The cat goes in and a door springs shut. Then off to the shelter.”

“I’ll consider it,” Gregory said, thinking a shotgun would be easier.

Ema’s fat breasts wobbled below the pendant as she turned to wave for the check, the ritual over for another few days. Ema picked up her purse, a beaded concoction the size of a bowler’s bag. Gregory watched her pudgy pink fingers scrabble for her wallet.

“It’s my turn to pick up the check, right, dear?” she said, staring into the junkyard of her purse.

“I’ll get it, Ema.” I don’t have twenty minutes for you to find your wallet. Though both had money from their inheritance, Gregory made additional money writing code for a company specializing in industrial controls. Ema had a part-time income doodling out chatty little women-directed newsletters for an HMO and insurance firm, and Gregory figured she did it while watching television.

The pair stood and Ema hugged Gregory so tight he smelled her body odor beneath the cloying perfume. After kissing his cheek – Gregory hiding the grimace – Ema waddled out to the parking lot.

Gregory went to the restroom and washed his hands for two minutes before opening the door with his elbow and striding toward the entrance. An elderly woman pushed the front door open and he jumped past her, drawing a sharp glance for the incivility, but he’d not had to touch anything.

On scene at the C-store until three a.m., I spent Sunday in busywork trying to push the attempted robbery from my mind. Sometimes it even worked for a couple minutes. When Monday arrived, I slept till nine, then walked the hundred paces from my stilt-standing home to the Dauphin Island beach, interrupting a flock of gulls and sending them into the cloudless sky.

I ran the sugar-white strand for three miles and returned, launching into the Gulf and swimming a leisurely down-and-back mile. Then I had breakfast on my deck – cheese grits and andouille sausage wrapped in a plate-sized flour tortilla, a grittito, in my parlance – and drank a pot of industrial-strength coffee with chicory. I felt steady again, Saturday night’s memories fading away. I climbed into a beater truck painted gray with a roller, and headed thirty miles north to Mobile, Alabama.

Almost summer, the coastal heat was nearing typical blast-furnace intensity, so walking into the chilled air of the Mobile Police Department felt delicious. Several colleagues called out as I walked the hall to the stairs.

“Hey, Carson, I need a bag of pretzels.”

“Ryder … now that I know you moonlight at a C-store, how’s about bringing in the Krispy Kremes?”

“Yo, CR … I need fifteen bucks on pump three.”

They were congratulating me, but being cops wouldn’t use those words. The accolades were in their grins. Or the thumbs up after the joke. I climbed the steps to the homicide department. Harry was on paid leave for three days, standard procedure for a cop involved in a killing.

“Carson!” a voice called. My supervisor, Lieutenant Tom Mason, stood at his office door, lean as a teenager though in his mid-fifties, wearing his cream Stetson and cowboy boots. Tom hailed from piney-woods Bama, but he always looked straight from a cattle drive across the plains. I banked in his direction.

“Chief Baggs wants to see you, Carson.”

I winced. “Why?”

“Probably something to do with last night. Make nice, Carson,” Tom said pointedly. “He’s the chief, right?”

I went upstairs to a hushed and carpeted row of offices inhabited by the brass hats of the department, crossing the floor with the same thought I get in funeral parlors: Where’s the nearest exit?

Chief Baggs’s personal assistant sat at a desk outside the closed door of his corner office. Though Darlene Combs was only in her late thirties, she’d already buried two husbands, one a suicide, the other OD-ing at a Jimmy Buffett concert. Her green eyes always seemed as irritated as her hair was red. I studied her outfit: a blue skirt hiked high to display plump thighs she thought slender; a white silk blouse a size too small, to highlight a pair of odes to silicone; and an Evan Picone jacket, to show she didn’t have to wear the big box knock-offs worn by the women on the lower floors.

Darlene said, “The Chief is very busy today.”

“He asked Lieutenant Mason to send me up here.”

“You’re not in the Chief’s appointment book.”

“Perhaps I’m in the footnotes.”

She tapped a button on her phone. “Chief?” she said. “Detective Ryder is out here.” She listened for several seconds, put the phone down. “He’s on the phone to the Mayor. It’ll be a few minutes.”

Every time I’d come here, I’d waited out a call to the Mayor. I once compared notes with Harry, who’d been here twice. Both times Harry cooled his heels while the Chief finished his consultations. Harry, ever the detective, had noted Baggs’s phone line wasn’t lit, but perhaps he communicated on a secret line like the Batphone.

Darlene returned to penciling a magazine page as I studied the walls, laden with photos of Baggs shaking every political hand in four states, including such Washington stalwarts as Alabama senators Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby. Both men’s eyes seemed to say, Who is this geek at the end of my arm?

Though the degree in Police Administration was framed near center on the Wall of Baggs, most prominent was the law degree. The name of the institution was unknown to me, perhaps a correspondence subsidiary of Harvard or Tulane. While the bulk of the photos and certificates were in simple black frames, the degree was in a baroque gilt rectangle. It seemed a shade overwrought, but who was I to judge, being sans entrée into the world of police administration.

The ambition-prone Carleton Baggs was late to the top floor. Though he and a cabal of like-minded administrators had been headed upstairs several years back, Baggs had cast his lot with an ambitious manipulator named Terrence Squill who eventually ascended to Acting Chief. Squill’s career had slammed a wall when he’d been murdered by an even more ambitious manipulator.

Since Harry and I – me particularly – played a major role in the incident, we were not beloved of several old-timers in administration, feeling we had delayed their ascension to the uppermost ranks, thus costing them time and money. When the former chief retired last fall, enough years had passed for the scandal to have become history. Baggs, twenty years in grade and boasting well-framed degrees in law and police administration, got his shiny new Chief hat.

Darlene’s phone buzzed. “You can go in,” she said, not looking up from her pencilings. I shot a downward glance and saw Darlene was taking a quiz: “Test Your Hotness in Bed”.

I mumbled Somewhere between death and dry ice.

“What?” she said.

“I said you look lovely today.”

Chief Baggs was staring out his window, his back broad and blue in summertime seersucker. I could smell his cologne, one of those over-musked concoctions advertised by ageing jocks wearing towels. He turned, snatching a memo from his jacket pocket.

“Your lieutenant recommended you for a citation,” he said. “I want to present the award in a department-wide ceremony to let the public see what their taxes are paying for.”

The situation wasn’t about me, it was about the department’s image. Baggs pursed his lips and studied my clothes: green tee, cream linen jacket, jeans, black running shoes. “You’ll wear a uniform or a suit,” the Chief said, recalling the time I received a citation dressed in chinos and a T-shirt touting CRAZY AL’S MARINA AND BAR.

“I’ll do the department proud,” I promised, holding up a two-fingered Boy Scout salute as I backpedaled.

“One more thing,” Baggs said, halting me with an upraised hand. “Shumuchuru is taking a leave of absence to care for his mother. He can’t teach his class series at the police academy. We need a replacement, starting tonight. It appears, Detective Ryder, that you’ve never done a teaching stint.”

I resisted a groan. “The classes always seem to be at times when I’m indisposed, Chief.”

“The last time the academy asked, you said you had to visit a sick brother. Didn’t you tell me you were an only child, Detective?”

I had a brother, but not one I admitted to – for various reasons. Thus I had long fostered the only-child story. “A misunderstanding, sir. It was, uh, an uncle.”

“You’ve also claimed your house had fallen into a sinkhole. Do they allow sinkholes on Dauphin Island, Detective?”

“Uh, more like quicksand, Chief. The stuff can be treacherous if—”

“I don’t know why you’re dodging the academy, Ryder,” he scowled. “People like you usually jump at the chance to pontificate before an audience.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know what good I could do, Chief. They’re raw recruits. Kids, basically.”

“Meaning what exactly, Ryder?”

I shook my head, Baggs just wasn’t getting it.

“It’s a total waste of my time, Chief,” I said. “Pearls before swine.”

Chapter 4

“Class is about over for tonight, folks,” I announced. “Any final questions?”

I set aside the projector’s remote and studied the recruits, surprised to discover the class wasn’t entirely made up of dolts. Several were complete dullards, of course, a red-faced mouth-breather named Wilbert Pendel coming to mind. No matter what I said, Pendel wanted to talk about guns. The other students began telling him to shut up. He muttered, stamped a foot on the floor like a mini-tantrum, then sulked in silence.

But on the whole the class seemed several notches above my expectations. They were fast learners, too. A cell phone had gone off early on. “Don’t think of that as a phone,” I’d said. “Think of it as a warning bell. When the next phone rings I will stomp it into its components. Thank you.”

Not an electronic peep since. I’d explained various homicide cases solved by Harry and me – with histories, photos, news stories – and the recruits now regarded me with eyes both admiring and envious, which wasn’t offensive in the least.

In response to my call for final questions, a tentative hand climbed into the air. “I have a question, Detective.”

“What was your name again?”

“Wendy Holliday, sir.”

Initially, I hadn’t been well disposed toward the auburn-haired Holliday, her slender frame, piercing gray eyes and pursed lips reminding me of a temperamental college girlfriend, but the long-legged recruit was one of the night’s best surprises: observant, analytical, and inquisitive, making intelligent – if wrong – conjectures about cases presented.

Intelligence took brains. Right took years.

“Your question, Holliday?” I asked.

“I’d like to know your most nightmarish scenario, Detective Ryder,” she said. “Real or imagined.”

I started to wave the question away as frivolous, but when everyone in the class leaned forward with interest, I considered what truly frightened me and reached into my briefcase for the rolled coins I kept forgetting to take to the bank. I broke open a tube of pennies and poured them into my palm.

“Here’s my nightmare scenario,” I said, flinging the coins skyward. They tinkled down across the floor, spinning, rolling into corners, dropping at the legs of desks and chairs.

“Penny-ante crime?” said a recruit named Wainwright, buying a round of laughter.

“Come on, kiddies,” I said, stepping in front of the lectern. “What inference can be made from the pattern?”

Several recruits stood to better survey the floor. I saw a tentative hand.

“Yes, Miz Holliday?” I said. “Have you discovered the pattern?”

“I don’t think there is a pattern, Detective Ryder. The coins fell at random.”

“Bingo,” I said. “Imagine a purely random victim selection process: the killer walks down the street with closed eyes, opens them and sees someone – cab driver, elderly woman, shopper, child in a playground. He tracks and kills that person. Without a motive – monetary, sexual, psychological, power, vengeance – the detective is never sure one death is connected to another. It’s my idea of a nightmare situation.”

“What about evidence at the scene?” a recruit named Terrell Birdly asked.

“I was purposefully simple for the sake of the answer,” I said. “If the perpetrator leaves his prints behind – or blood or semen or the mortgage to his home – the case gets easier to solve. But let me enhance our scenario by giving the killer three traits: high intelligence, a basic knowledge of police procedures, and an awareness of the confusion he’s causing. Now you’ve got big trouble.”

“You’ve dealt with random killings, sir?” Birdly asked.

I shook my head. “I’ve never personally seen a killer without some form of motive, though it eludes the killer himself. Even with severely deranged minds, I’ve always found a motive behind the madness.”

I was making that information up on the fly. But it felt right.

“Seeing all the cases you and Detective Nautilus solved,” one young woman gushed, “I figure if anyone could catch a random killer, it would be you, Detective Ryder.”

She was cute and her breathy words sent a pleasant blush to my neck. “I expect you’re exactly right,” I said, bouncing on my heels. “And on that note, class is dismissed …” I held out my cupped hand, fingers making the gimme motion. “After the pennies have come home.”

Gregory had done a half-hour’s worth of faces followed by two strenuous sessions on his Bowflex, pushing to his limits as he watched his sweating body in the mirror, muscles shining and rippling.

Frail, Ema? I’ll show you frail … I’ll turn into the fucking Hulk next time.

He’d followed with a shower, then gone to his office to write code. He worked in a suit, but after being on the job four hours allowed himself to hang the jacket over the back of his chair and roll his sleeves to mid-forearm.

Gregory took a break, sitting in the dark with honeyed tea and graham crackers covered with organic peanut butter. He winced at the yowl of a horny feline outside his window. He had called the Animal Control department twice in the past week, but the cats eluded the nets.

After his recent breakfast with Ema, Gregory had considered her comments, then grudgingly purchased a Havahart Cat Trap and Rescue Kit, the most humane way to trap cats, according to Ema. He’d set the ridiculous cage-like contraption in his backyard at dawn. Probably time to check it.

Gregory changed from suit into chinos and a polo shirt. Tucking a flashlight into his pocket, he stepped into the backyard, the steamy air smelling of the pine straw at the base of the trees.

Feeling a delicious shivering in his loins, Gregory tiptoed to his burlap-camouflaged trap at the rear of the long yard. He snapped the fabric away and shone his flashlight down.

He had a cat.

Chapter 5

“… risking his life disguised as a convenience store clerk, his surveillance and backup team across the street, Detective Ryder heroically …”

Chief Baggs’s memo had pulled a third of the force to my award ceremony. I figured he’d had a PR person write his speech, since he never said anything similar to me.

“… talent of the MPD marksman who took out the woman perpetrator as Detective Nautilus simultaneously incapacitated her male counterpart …”

I’d asked Harry to share in the award, but he refused, claiming he’d been beside me for a half-dozen other citations and this time I was on my own. Cal Mallory, our senior marksman, declined as well, not wanting to remind his neighbors his livelihood included shooting people in the head.

“… ladies and gentlemen of the force and guests, I present Detective Carson Ryder …”

I strode to the dais as Janet Wing tracked me with a camcorder. Wing was a student intern in the PR office. Our main PR person was Carl Bergen, a retired cop supplementing his pension. Ask Carl what he thought of the New Media, and he’d say he really enjoyed cable TV. Wing, on the other hand, had the department on Facebook from day one and trumpeted the MPD across venues most cops would never see. I figured the net effect was near zero, but Wing was a determined type.

“… known to everyone in the department. Ladies and gentlemen, Detective Carson Ryder.”

Chief Baggs recited a few more words and handed me a framed certificate that would look nice in the closet with the others.

That’s when things got weird.

Everyone stood, hands pounding as if I were Hank Aaron at his retirement game. Not knowing how to respond, I held the cheesy plaque high, strutting like a card girl at a prize fight. The applause turned to cheers as I sashayed across the stage, some cops singing a tuneless version of “I Fought the Law (and the Law Won)”.

A perplexed Baggs dismissed the gathering. I went to the foyer, where cheers turned to good-natured insults. Most folks headed to Flanagan’s, a loud and rowdy cop bar. Harry and I booked to a quieter joint a few blocks away. I was still pondering the surreal action at the ceremony.

“Jesus, Harry,” I said, “it was like everyone made me king for two minutes.”

My partner tried to hide the smile, couldn’t. “I take it you didn’t read the memo sent out by the new PR intern?” He reached into his jacket pocket for a copied document, slid it across the table.

The award ceremony for Detective Carson Ryder will be held tonight at seven p.m. in the City Building’s auditorium. Past ceremonies have been sedate and we’d prefer to present a more positive face to the public. Thus when Det. Ryder receives his award I encourage everyone to be upbeat and demonstrative…

“Upbeat and demonstrative,” I sighed. The whole thing had been a big joke and Wing – now introduced to cop humor – would be more measured with her words in the future.

A week passed, and I survived the next two academy classes, Wendy Holliday remaining the standout, the sullen Wilbert Pendel her counterbalance. I came to work later on post-class mornings, figuring each two-hour class cost me seven hours in actual time and prep time. I was crossing the room at half-past ten when Tom called across the floor.

“Carson, see you a moment?”

I turned to see him hanging up his phone. Tom was leaning back in his chair with his cowboy boots on his desk, hand-tooled, silver-tipped, lacking only spurs to complete the effect. He picked up his Stetson and spun it on one finger, a puzzled expression on his face.

“Please don’t tell me Baggs has set up another award ceremony,” I said.

Tom grinned, looking like an amused basset hound. “I heard the guys were planning to have a little fun.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “Little.”

He went serious. “Listen, Carson, what was that thing you told me about psychopaths and animals? The markers?”

“A huge per cent of serial killers have three markers in their history: pyromania, chronic bedwetting, and cruelty to animals.”

Tom sighed. “The dispatcher got a call from Al Hernandez in Animal Control and it got bumped to me. Can you spare a few minutes to talk to the guy?”

I called Hernandez. What I heard had me in my car five minutes later, roaring to northwest Mobile, up where the auto graveyards and carpet outlets turned into farms and woods.

Hernandez was on a small county road, against a white van with DEPARTMENT OF ANIMAL CONTROL, MOBILE, ALABAMA on its side. A rope-skinny guy in a brown uniform, sleeves rolled up, sinewy forearms, he had a high forehead, inquisitive eyes and a neat mustache. He led the way to a slow-flowing muddy creek below the bridge, a shallow pool on the upstream side, sandy hummocks downstream. Trash thrown from above was everywhere.

Swatting insects from my face, I followed Hernandez to the downstream side and smelled decomposition. Scattered across the ground were four small carcasses, cats. All were burned and split open, like they’d been gutted. Three lacked tails. Hernandez had the right instinct: the hairs stood up on the back of my neck.

“Couple kids from a farm down the road found ’em,” he said. “I figure the carcasses got flung from a car, expected to float away. Some probably did, but these landed on high ground.”

I studied the stinking ruination at my feet, sighed and ran to my cruiser, back thirty seconds later with latex gloves and a twenty-gallon trash bag.

“What you gonna do?” Hernandez asked.

“Get myself on the pathology department’s shit list for about a month,” I said.

Chapter 6

“Autopsy a cat?” Clair Peltier said, frowning at the lumpy bag in my hand. “Is that what you’re trying to say?”

She was assembling instruments for a procedure. With her coal-black hair and outsize arctic-blue eyes, Clair Peltier, director of the southwest division of the Alabama Bureau of Forensics, was the only person I knew who made formless surgery garb look sexy. She flicked a switch, testing the high-powered light above. I made the mistake of looking up.

“Actually, several cats,” I said, blinking away shapes floating before my eyes. Clair thumbed a button and water washed down the table. Satisfied with the flow rate, thumbed it off.

“For what case, specifically?”

“You know how the maniacs start, Clair. Bedwetting, fire—”

Clair nodded to names on a whiteboard: four postmortems scheduled for today alone. “Autopsies are backlogged, Carson. The human kind. And I’m short a pathologist.”

“Please, Clair?” I lifted the bag of dead cats and tried to appear needy.

She shook her head. “There’s not even a case file to assign to the work.”

“Clair …”

“Sorry, Carson.”

I was three steps gone when I turned and emptied the bag onto the gleaming table. Clair’s eyes flared. “What are you …” A tailless carcass caught her eye. She frowned and leaned closer to the charred husks that had once been living creatures, reading every mark and torment on the pathetic remains.

“Put them in cooler eight,” she said. “I’ll invent a case number.”

Gregory’s fingers tapped the keys of the computer on his desk, developing software for precision heat delivery in ceramic coatings applications. It was supremely boring. The company was located in Birmingham, but there was no need for Gregory to work on-site. In fact, he’d only visited the headquarters once, when he interviewed for the position. Because of his unusual health history, he’d undergone a trial period, but surpassed his employer’s expectations several times over. He worked an average of a dozen hours a week, though he billed for thirty. And was still lauded for his productivity and “elegant” shortcuts.

He stood from his chair, stretched, ran a few faces found in a recent magazine – Congestion-free at Last; Travel Opportunities Await; Concerned About Inflation? – then went downstairs to find fuel.

The carpeted stairs led to Gregory’s living room, low black-fabric couches and chairs with burnished-steel frames, the floor polished oak parquet, the lamps mere stalks with globes. The entertainment center held a large-screen television and the latest audio devices, including surround sound. The other rooms were decorated in the same spare and sleek fashion.

Gregory had bought the house after qualifying for his inheritance. The first month his sole furnishings were a mattress on the floor, table and chair in the kitchen, an overstuffed reading chair and lamp and a television to provide items to talk with the morons about.

Life had been simple and perfect.

Three weeks after Gregory’s arrival Ema had visited unexpectedly. He inspected his visitor via the door lens, seeing a pink pendant floating between a double chin and milk-white cleavage. For a split second his knees loosened and his breath seemed to stick in his throat. Inhaling deeply, he’d opened the door with a broad expression from a dishwasher-soap ad, You’ll Say WOW at Sparkle-Clean Dishes!

“I knew it’d take you for ever to invite me over,” Ema said, already apologizing. “I hope you’re not angry with me dropping by and—”

“It’s a wonderful surprise. I’ve just been working.”

Ema entered the living room. “Goodness, where’s the rest of your furniture?”

“I, uh, haven’t had time.”

“You brainy types. We’ll start at the stores this weekend.”

“I … have someone helping me already,” Gregory invented, aghast at the prospect of spending hours in Ema’s company, his face going into spasms with the effort of matching her enthusiasm for each color and pattern and item of furniture.

Ema clapped her hands. “You hired a decorator!”

“He’s coming this week,” Gregory said. “I can’t wait to get started.”

Cursing his fate, he contacted a decorator minutes after Ema padded away. The man arrived the next day, a leather-trousered robot that walked as if it were dancing. Gregory’s instructions had been simple: “Make it look like someone lives here.”

“Don’t you live here?” the decorator replied, puzzled.

Gregory felt his intestines begin to constrict as his mind raced to find the solution. Then the deco-robot clapped its hands and laughed as if in appreciation of a joke. “Oh, wait … I get it. You want a lived-in quality. Something comfy. No problem. I just need your preferences in style, colors …”

Gregory retreated to his Faces room, digging through magazines and expelling gases from his painful tubes. Five minutes later he handed the man a page from a magazine. “This is it.”

The deco-robot studied the page, puzzled again. “Danish ultra-Modern. Not what I picture as old-shoe comfy.”

“That’s what I want,” Gregory said, tapping the photo. “It looks easy to care for.”

“I’ll contact sources, show you photos. I’ll call soon with choices in—”

“No,” Gregory said. “You do it. Colors, furniture. Everything.”

The man showed confusion again, but Gregory spoke four words he’d found helpful in dealing with the robots.

He said, “Price is no object.”

The decorator said, “Whatever you want, sir.”

The empty spaces had been filled with couches, chairs, sleek floor lamps, accessories such as the red glass vase on the mantel. Above the mantel hung a huge, multicolored mish-mash the decorator had called “an abstraction redolent of Kandinsky”.

Interested in the odd phenomenon of hanging someone else’s scribbling on one’s walls, Gregory had borrowed books on modern art from the library. He now knew what Kandinskys were, but couldn’t understand why. The only works he understood were by Andy Warhol. Products, packages, people, faces, all reduced to flat simplicity and repeated endlessly in different shades …

Warhol knew.

Gregory continued to his kitchen and blended organic power bars with almond milk, honey, protein powders and vitamins, drinking the foaming concoction. He felt a rumble in his bowels as the food filled his stomach, a sharp pain in his tubes, the new food pressing vapors from his body. His knees loosened and his face went slack. His hands began to shake and long-gone voices filled his mind.

“You have splendid vodka tonight. And such food!”

“Carnati, piftie, mamaliga. Tuica made from plums as sweet as your mouth. Call Petrov and Cojocaru. And, of course, sweet Dragna. Tell them time grows short and we must enjoy our remaining nights to the fullest. Hurry, then we’ll go select tonight’s robots.”

Gregory leaned against the counter and caught his breath.

What happened?

It was the remnant of a dream, he knew. He had built a wall between him and his dreams, but on rare occasions images pushed through. He must have dreamt last night, a piece of dream finding a crack in the wall. He looked around the room, needing to focus on something beyond unbidden voices and pictures.

Bong bong bong …

Gregory heard the alarm ring on his computer upstairs: time to go out and check his trap. The dream disappeared within a quickening pulse and he swiftly changed into outside clothes. He had another cat, skinny and white with brown spots. It mewed plaintively and pressed against the furthest corner of the wire mesh, shaking with terror.

“Don’t worry,” Gregory grinned, the bad dream eclipsed by his new acquisition. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

Chapter 7

“What was that, Detective Ryder … did you say lack of effect? What kind of effect?”

I was starting to think Wilbert Pendel would never graduate from the academy. The kid wasn’t stupid, he just seemed unable to listen or focus.

“I didn’t say E-ffect, Pendel,” I explained. “I said Af-fect. A common characteristic of someone suffering antisocial personality disorder – sociopathy – is a lack of affect. Can anyone tell me what I’m talking about?”

Class was nearing its end and again the students had drifted to homicide investigation. Though most homicides were depressing sagas of love gone wrong or gang avengement or drug-driven slayings, everyone seemed fascinated by the Mansons and the Bundys and the Gacys.

My question launched a smattering of hands, the majority of students pretending to study the array of cell phones, laptops, iPads and other electronic wizardry on their desktops. On my first day I had questioned the need for the gadgetry. It was politely noted that I had compiled digital photos and words in PowerPoint and was writing on a five-thousand-dollar interactive digital whiteboard.

I indicated the nearest palm. “Yes, Miss Holliday?”

“Doesn’t affect mean, uh, showing your feelings? So wouldn’t lack of affect be showing no feelings?”

I nodded. “Affect is emotion displayed by facial and body gestures, laughter, tears. Show most people a fluffy puppy and they’ll ooh and ahhh and gush about cuteness. A sociopath views only an object captioned Dog. A puppy, a choking baby, a blind man in traffic, all carry zero emotional weight. Lacking a conscience, a sociopath feels neither guilt nor shame. Ditto for morality, responsibility, compassion, love … all as foreign as the topography of Pluto.”

“Having zero conscience sounds like complete freedom, in a way,” Terrell Birdly said quietly, his legs crossed in the aisle. “There’s nothing to keep you from doing anything you want.”

The skinny black kid with the heavy-lidded eyes could cut to the heart of an issue. “No boundaries.” I nodded. “It’s what makes the violent ones so dangerous.”

“Aren’t they all violent?” Jason Kellogg asked.

“Most are content to disrupt the lives of those nearest them through lies and manipulation. Only a few develop homicidal leanings, thankfully.”

“Do they feel fear?” Birdly asked; another good question.

“Heart-pumping, fight-or-flight adrenalin?” I said. “Most shrinks don’t think so. What socios do have, the bright ones, is a powerful drive to avoid negative results, such as incarceration.”

“If sociopaths show no emotion, how do they get by?” Amanda Sanchez frowned, her round face framed by close-cropped chestnut hair. Her silver hoop earrings seemed large enough to pick up broadcast signals.

“They can be superb mimics, training themselves to display correct emotional responses. Sociopaths are self-preservation machines and the better they blend into the crowd, the more they can accomplish. False emotions are their currency.”

Wendy Holliday’s hand rose haltingly. “I might have once heard a notion, called functionalism or something like that, which says emotions are an evolutionary response to stimuli and are designed to keep people safe. Like smiling when meeting someone to show you mean no harm. Or displaying sympathy to create a bond. Sociopaths don’t only learn the rules of emotion to blend in, it’s essential for manipulation.”

“Exactly,” I said, my voice curt. “See me after the class.”

A moment of uncomfortable silence as eyes turned to Holliday, now shrinking in her desk. Another hand lifted.

“Miss Lemlitch?”

“I was just thinking that it seems a lonely life. Being a sociopath.”

“The closest they probably come is feeling a lack of someone to manipulate. What we call loneliness can’t occur in a sociopath.”

“I don’t get it. Why not?”

“Normal humans define and mingle interior and exterior relationships. We experience the idea of Me, plus the broader concept of Us, the world of relationships and commonalities. Knowing the world of Us, the normal Me can feel loneliness when Us is lacking. Sociopaths exist solely in the realm of Me. When you are your own universe, there’s no place for Us.”

“But they have to deal with the Us,” Amanda Sanchez said. “Doesn’t that pull them into the real world or whatever?”

I said, “Take it, Holliday.”

Confusion in her eyes. “Excuse me, Detective?”

“I’m ceding the floor. Answer the question: How do sociopaths deal with the concept of Us?”

Holliday swallowed hard. “Uh, I guess in their world it’s not Us, it’s Them. Me versus Them. Me is inflated via pathological megalomania or narcissism, while Them is demoted to insignificance, a collection of idiots and fools.”

“Good,” I said. “Us is an inclusive collective, Them isn’t.”

“My head’s spinning,” someone said, sparking laughter.

“Are such people born or made?” Jason Kellogg asked.

“Some might be born that way. An anomaly in the brain. The ones I’ve seen – the homicidal – were created, often by childhoods that made the Spanish Inquisition seem pleasant.” I shot a glance at the clock. “That’s it,” I said. “We’re outta here.”

I began stuffing material in my briefcase, then heard metallic clicks and saw an anxious Holliday approaching. “Why are you clicking?” I asked, looking at blue shoes crisscrossed with zippy white detailing.

“I’m wearing cleats. Bike shoes. I forgot my regular shoes. You wanted to see me, Detective Ryder?”

“Your comments on affect and emotion were phrased to sound like errant facts grazed somewhere,” I said, leaning against the lectern and looking her in the eye. “But later remarks suggest you know the lingo, perhaps through study. How am I doing?”

Embarrassment colored her long neck. “Psychology was my major, along with law enforcement.”

Two majors. I closed my eyes. “All right. See you at the next class.”

She turned and hustled toward the door. “Holliday?” I said to her back.

She turned. “Yes, Detective Ryder?”

“Don’t pretend uncertainty in my classroom, kid. If you know something for a fact, say it. And be goddamn proud you took the time to learn it.”

She nodded and left the room. I left seconds later. Leaning against the hall wall was a familiar man in a puce shirt, lavender slacks and blue running shoes. All he seemed to lack were purple socks, which I noted when he stepped from the wall.

I hadn’t told Harry I’d been hijacked into servitude, but police departments held few secrets. A regular academy instructor, Harry had been trying to wrangle me into a classroom stint for years. “I heard the great Carson Ryder finally deigned to teach,” he grinned. “You enjoying the experience?”

I shrugged, no big deal.

Harry laughed and clasped my shoulder. “Bullshit, Cars. You love it. Where else are guys like us gonna find a roomful of people to hang on our every word? Let’s go grab a beer and—”

My cell trilled. The screen showed C. Peltier.

“What’s up, Clair?” I asked, seeing motion outside the window, Holliday blowing past on a bicycle, hair trailing from an orange helmet.

Clair said, “I finished that extracurricular project of yours.”

The cats. “What’d you find?”

A pause. “I’ve been in the morgue for fourteen straight hours. How about you buy me a cocktail at Tango?”

Chapter 8

The Sex Itch commandeered Gregory’s head. He’d been making discoveries with his new cat, but when the Itch got this strong nothing was a distraction; he needed to empty into a woman. It was Ladies Night at a lot of local bars, desperate women everywhere, and Gregory knew if he wasn’t choosy, he could be in and out of one in a couple of hours.

Gregory shaved and showered and tried a new moisturizer he’d created from olive oil, honey, retinol and a dab of Preparation H. The oil smoothed, the honey nourished, the retinol restored, and Preparation H drew out the tiny crow’s feet at the edges of his eyes, a flaw in the smooth perfection of his face.

He wore the concoction as a mask, saturating his flesh as he selected his wardrobe: blue oxford shirt sans tie, a russet linen sport jacket, chestnut-brown slacks and cordovan loafers. Gregory washed off the moisturizer while peering in the magnifying mirror, noting how small and delicate his pores were. He stared into his eyes, pleased at the subtlety of hue, and winked. He started to turn away, but realized his wink had gone unacknowledged, so he returned his wink for closure.

Gregory and Me, he thought. Us.

Just before opening the front door, he reviewed his condition. Stomach calm. Breath relaxed. Bladder empty. Gregory moved his consciousness to his groin and found a problem: He was semi-tumescent with the prospect of releasing his fluids inside a human body. He unzipped his fly and, staring at the ceiling, gave himself an orgasm in under a minute, careful to ejaculate on the mat by the door. This would make later sex last longer.

Gregory stepped into a blue dusk, turning to see his elderly neighbor watering tall red things in her front yard. Millard, Agnes. Seventy-seven years of age, retired CPA for Austal Inc. Husband Lyle Graham Millard, former insurance actuary, died three years ago, heart attack on a plane in Mexico (Idiot; who would visit Mexico, much less board a plane there?). Sister Carla, brother James, sixty-nine and eighty, respectively. James in Birmingham, retired optometrist …

The data streamed through a lower channel of Gregory’s consciousness, accessible in case the wrinkly old bitch wandered to the fence to blather. Millard, thankfully, continued sprinkling the lawn, flicking a wave. Gregory climbed into his car and made a check of all systems: fuel, oil pressure, water level, doors closed, seat belt engaged, gasoline level of seven-tenths. His odometer read 6,235.2. Plus his intestines were calm and he’d ejaculated.

Everything as it should be.

Gregory wound toward the hotel bars in the Airport Road area, shadowy bunkers with an ever-changing cast of locals, transient businesspeople and pianists no one listened to. He picked one and sat on a barstool, ordering a glass of wine, more prop than libation. Too much alcohol made his faces inexact and increased the likelihood of mistranslations.

Gregory noticed a woman at the far end of the bar: fortyish, spray-lacquered blonde hair, a button nose and eyebrows penciled in swooping arcs. Her chin was doubling. She wore a red dress showing more leg than the legs were worth. The woman was talking with wide gestures and an overloud voice and Gregory judged her to meet his three criteria for prompt sex: Ageing, Homely, and Buzzed.

“I’d like to buy the lady a drink,” Gregory said to the bartender, watching its delivery. The woman smiled broadly and lifted the glass his way, Thanks. A connection made, Gregory shot the woman faces as he sipped his wine, starting with It Feels Good to Relax and inching up to I’ve Got a Secret Just for You.

Ten minutes later she was leaving her stool to walk to him (one of Gregory’s rules: never go to them). A half-hour later she was walking out the door after him, squeezing his arm. The woman followed Gregory home in her own vehicle; another rule: Gregory wasn’t a taxi service.

Clair lived in Mobile’s Spring Hill neighborhood, a beautiful and wooded enclave of historic homes. Tango, an upscale bar-restaurant at the edge of Spring Hill, offered a quiet walnut-and-brass ambience preferred by the wealthy denizens of the community. I’d been to the joint three times and never saw anyone tangoing.

Harry and I entered and saw Clair in a back booth. The dinner crowd had been replaced by inebriated businessmen. One, a fortyish investment banker-type in a black suit with wide pinstripes, stood beside Clair’s table with a lascivious grin below a hundred-buck haircut. He was tall and relaxed and had the look of a man who specialized in bored housewives.

“Come on,” he was saying. “Let me buy a pretty lady a drink.”

“No, thank you, I’m waiting for friends.”

“If they’re as pretty as you,” the Scotch-fueled lothario winked, “I’ll buy them drinks, too.”

Harry tiptoed to Pinstripes. “Sounds good, buddy. I’ll take a Sam Adams. Carson?”

I slipped past Pinstripes and sat across from Clair. “Same.”

“Two Sammys, then,” Harry said, big hand squeezing the man’s shoulder like he was an old friend. The guy was paler by two shades, staring three inches up into Harry’s eyes. “I, uh, I really didn’t mean that I was going to, uh, buy you—”

Harry’s smiling eyes tightened toward scowl. “Are you saying I’m not pretty?”

I tugged the guy’s sleeve. “Tread lightly,” I cautioned. “My friend is hurt he wasn’t chosen as Junior Miss again this year.”

“Guys …” Clair admonished. But her eyes were having fun.

Pinstripes glanced toward four similarly dressed men at the bar, his colleagues. They’d probably been betting on his success with Clair, but had turned away when Casanova stepped in it. “Bartender!” Pinstripes barked with a frozen smile. “Two Sam Adams over here.”

“Thanks, brotha,” Harry said, releasing his grip on the guy’s shoulder. “Nice to know I still got it.”

Pinstripes backpedaled like a sprinter in reverse, banged his ass on a table, spun and disappeared from our day.

“Get many drinks like that?” Clair said as Harry sat.

“Not nearly enough.”

Clair’s smile faded as she removed a file from her briefcase and studied it as if reluctant to flap it open, a Pandora’s box of manila. “And now, on to your latest project, Carson …” She pulled out pages, put on reading glasses, and detailed her findings in detached and clinical verbiage. I winced at the repetition of the word “vivisection”.

When she closed the file no one spoke.

Gregory was laying in bed and stroking himself. “Come back to bed,” he said. “We’re just getting started.”

“I’m not in the mood,” the woman said, pulling on her panties.

The woman had been a poor choice, Gregory thought. First off, she had more native caution than he’d judged, always a problem. Secondly, she was a Kisser, Gregory enduring ten minutes of lips slopping over his, biting, tugging, running her tongue over his teeth as if feeling for a snack.

When Gregory’d finally tugged her clothes off – did the bitch ever stop talking? – he needed oral sex, but the woman only used her hand. When he pushed her head toward his groin she’d grumbled he was messing up her hair. When he’d given up on a blowjob, he mounted her and put her legs over his shoulders. He was rubbing her anus with the tip of his penis when she nixed that one. So he’d settled for pussy and was finding his rhythm when the woman complained the position was cutting off her breath.

And now the bitch was standing up and putting on her dress.

“Come on,” Gregory said.

“Not gonna happen.” The woman stepped into her shoes. “I’m not there.”

“There? Where the hell is there?”

“Like I said, in the mood.” She spelled it out, “m-o-o-d”, as if talking to a third-grader. Gregory felt his jaw clench in anger, both at her condescension and because he wasn’t sure what she was saying.

“A mood is happy or sad,” he explained. “We were fucking.”

“OK, then,” the woman said. “I’m happy we stopped fucking. How about that?”

Gregory let his face go slack, no need to waste any more energy. He could at least learn something. “Just what is it you want?” he asked.

She frowned. “Want?”

“You hang around bars to meet men who want to fuck. If you don’t want to fuck, what do you want? You’re not attractive, you’re not young, you’re not smart. You can’t want much, because you don’t have anything to trade.”

The woman picked up her purse and left the bedroom. Gregory stood at the top of the stairs and watched her descend the steps to the front door. She put her hand on the knob, then turned to him.

“You fart while you screw, you know that? Little ones that leak out. What’s that about?”

“Get out of my house.”

“You should see a doctor. Maybe get a cork put in.”

“GET OUT!”

“And not only do you leak stinky farts, buddy …” she said, a smile crossing her lips, “you fuck like a fifteen-year-old.”

She walked out. Gregory’s red-faced anger turned to cramps in his intestines. He doubled over in pain and ran to the bathroom, leaking gas with every step.

I arrived home at midnight and checked my e-mail. Clair sometimes followed late-night conversations with thoughts on the topic, using e-mail in case I’d gone to bed.

I sat on the couch with my laptop. Nothing from Clair, just the usual spam assuming I was a lonely man with erectile dysfunction who needed pictures from hot Russian women, a fifteen-inch penis, and a Rolex knock-off. I was deleting the crap when I noted a post from Wholliday, the subject line a simple Sorry.

Detective Ryder,

There was a girl in my high school history class named Nancy Sullivan. When the teacher asked a question, Ms Sullivan not only answered it, but added everything she’d ever learned about anything. She was a bore and no one liked her.

I think I was afraid of becoming Nancy Sullivan if I kept referring to things I’d learned in my Psych classes. I’m sorry, and in the future I’ll always chime in when I can. I will also be proud that I took the time to learn it, which hadn’t occurred to me before.

Your class is my favorite, and I think the favorite of most of my colleagues.

Thank you,

Nancy Sul … I mean Wendy Holliday

(Student in your Overview of Investigative Techniques class)

I laughed at the sign-off and re-read the letter. My mind presented me with a picture of Holliday snapped at the last class: exiting after our talk, her high, round hips ticking side to side and metered by precise clicks, the cleats of her bike shoes tapping on the hard floor.

It was a delightful picture and I studied it for several gratifying moments. Then I closed down the computer and went to the deck to sit in the dark, trying to understand a mind that would find pleasure in mutilating helpless animals.

Chapter 9

Gregory was driving to the quiet and expensive whorehouse he sometimes patronized. It had taken an hour for his anger at the woman to subside. He had almost followed the pig out the door and to her home, thinking of wiring the slut to her goddamn bed, slicing her open and running his fingers through her guts while she watched.

But he’d gripped tight to the staircase and run the data: he didn’t know her house, her neighborhood, what he’d do with the body. To kill a human was probably easy if you planned correctly, but he hadn’t planned. One misstep and he’d go to prison, a place where they put you in a box and fed you slop and everyone waited for night to come so they could hurt you.

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?

Chapter 10

“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. Cut 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.”

“Chiaroscuro,” Holliday said. “The juxtaposition of dark and light.”

“Nice vocabulary, Wendy.”

She blushed again and turned toward the door. “I guess I’ll see you in class, right?” she said over her shoulder.

“Looking forward to it,” I nodded, fighting to keep my eyes level.

Chapter 11

Gregory was sleeping when his cell rang from the bedside table. He tried to ignore it until his eyes caught the clock: 10.17 a.m. He never slept past eight … why did I …

The horrors of his night flooded into his head.

You fart while you screw, little ones that leak out.

The goddamn woman, the slut who’d insulted him. It was all her fault, making him need a whore, leading to getting stopped by the goddamn cops. Then the filth, shame, humiliation.

Step out of the car please …

The smell of shit was everywhere.

Officer—

… no not here no not now …

What happened after that?

GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE GODDAMN CAR.

My pants—

Officer, please, I can’t—

What happened next?

It’s one of them pervert magazines, Horse. Something called Women in Agony.

Gregory moaned. The phone rang a third time.

If you jam rubber balls in their mouths, it doesn’t leave room for your dick.

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

What happened next? What happened next?

The phone rang again. The answering machine came on. “Leave a number and I’ll get back to you.”

“Gregory?” a voice said, worried. “Gregory? Are you all right?”

Ema.

“Gregory? Are you there? Please pick up if you are. I’m so worried that you—”

He grabbed the phone. Pushed the thoughts of last night from his head. Ema was the current problem.

What happened next?

“I’m here, Ema. What the hell’s wrong now?”

A pause as his sister swallowed hard. She hated it when he cursed. “I’ve been … worried about you. We had breakfast scheduled for nine-thirty. I waited a half-hour and left.”

“Why didn’t you call from the restaurant?”

“I was afraid you might be ill. I didn’t want to wake you.”

“I simply forgot to set my alarm, Ema. I’m fine.”

“You never oversleep.”

Gregory felt his guts cinch up. “I never tell you when I oversleep because you’ll fucking think I have sleeping sickness.”

“I couldn’t eat at the restaurant,” she said. “I just had coffee. Why don’t you come over and I’ll fix us a healthy breakfast.”

“I can’t, Ema. I have so much to do today and—”

“Grigor, you have to eat. And you know you won’t unless I—”

“It’s Gregory, Ema. G-r-e—”

“It pops out when I get worried. I’m sorry, Gregory. I worry about my little brother too much; it’s stupid.”

Christ, Gregory thought, Grigor. The fucking name was a dozen years gone, but poor addled Ema still used it several times a year.

“You’re not stupid, Ema, you have a big heart,” Gregory said, wishing she had a brain to match. He did a high-speed inventory of his systems, finding hunger: if he didn’t eat he’d get a headache. And if he didn’t see Ema this morning, she’d want to make up the missed meal tomorrow at one of her goddamn restaurants. If he ran over now he’d be free of her for days.

“Let me get dressed,” he said. “I don’t want a big breakfast, Ema. Toast and honey, right?”

He went to the garage. His car stank of shit. And the brown stains were soaked into the fabric of his seat. He went back in the house and called a cab.

Fifteen minutes later Gregory’s taxi was winding past brick and wood structures with large front windows and decorative plastic doors, Ema’s suburban housing complex.

Ema lived but two miles distant from Gregory. When he had received his inheritance, she had tried to get him to buy a home on her street, but he had shot that idea down immediately, knowing Ema would be visiting every day, plates of cookies or stuffed cabbage rolls in hand.

She was at the door as he arrived – probably watching for me since I hung up the phone – and he submitted to another crushing, smelly hug, her pendant pressing against his belly. But he endured, smiling through every second.

“Why did you come in a cab?” she asked. “You weren’t in a wreck, were you?”

“Just some mechanical problem.”

Ema’s living room was a warehouse of girly-type things overlaying the simple Colonial furniture; rag dolls on the couch, a throw pillow on a rocking chair, the words LOVE CHANGES EVERYTHING embroidered on its multicolored surface, a dozen kinds of cutesy magazines. There was a pink bookshelf of mysteries, biographies of Hollywood celebrities, and several running feet of true-life crime books. The television was on, though muted, Ema incapable of life without TV. She had a set in every room, an endless display of talent competitions, cop dramas, cooking programs and home-shopping options.

“I’m so happy you’re all right,” Ema said. “I was worried when you didn’t show.”

“You worry too much. I’m a grown-up.”

“I know. But it’s like I always told Dr Szekely: Even when Gregory’s fifty, he’ll still be my baby brother.”

Gregory fought to keep from rolling his eyes. Ema nodded toward the rear of the house. “Let’s eat in the kitchen as it’s so sunny.”

“Just toast and honey for me,” Gregory said. He’d said it earlier, but telling Ema not to cook was like telling a fish not to swim.

Gregory followed Ema to the kitchen, too bright for his eyes, sun streaming painfully through the window. He looked to the table and saw tomato slices, onion slices, link sausages, biscuits from a can, and a blue porcelain bowl full of thick yellow goo. He stared, feeling his stomach begin to foam.

“Is that mamaliga?” he whispered. The pendant glistened between Ema’s fat breasts as she picked up the bowl and brought it near, as if offering Gregory a gift. He smelled fumes coming from the pile of cheap, filthy and inescapable Romanian porridge.

He turned away. “Get rid of it. I can’t look at that shit.” Gregory’s hands clenched into fists and blood roared in his ears. He slapped the bowl from Ema’s hands. It spun to the floor and shattered, the thick cornmeal porridge breaking into pieces.

“IF YOU WANT ME TO STAY YOU’LL GET THAT SHIT AWAY FROM ME!”

“I’m s-sorry,” Ema said, her voice trembling. “S-so sorry, Grigor. I only wanted to make you happy. I only w-want—”

“STOP WITH THE FUCKING GRIGOR!”

Bawling as if her world had exploded, Ema turned and ran from the kitchen. Her toe caught in the rug and she stumbled to the floor and lay there crying.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry …”

Gregory ran his options. He had to tell her he was sorry. Ema had made the sickening slop, but now he was the one who would have to apologize. The Moron World went by rules that were inside-out.

He walked to his sister and leaned to touch her back. “Are you all right, Ema?”

A shiver ran through her body. “I’m so sorry I made you mad. I always do stupid things. I’m so ashamed.”

“I’m the one that’s sorry, Ema,” Gregory said, his expression blank since Ema’s face was in the carpet. “I shouldn’t have gotten angry.”

“Hold me, Gregory,” Ema wailed, trying to roll to sitting, the pendant flapping across her skin, into the folds of her breasts. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “Please hold me, Gregory. No one ever holds me.”

Gregory felt his skin crawl, but lowered himself to the rug and wrapped his arms around his sister as far as they would reach. Her body heaved with sobs and her odor rose to his nose and mingled with the smell of the mamaliga splattered across the kitchen floor. The smells turned to the stink of shit and Gregory fought the urge to retch.

“I never want to hurt you,” Ema wailed in English, then the same in Romanian, the old native tongue rising unbidden through tears and fear. “Hold me, Grigor,” Ema bawled, clutching at Gregory’s surrounding arms and making him wish he could disappear into the air.

What happened next?

Gregory escaped after a depressing half-hour. The smell of Ema and the mamaliga and all the female odors of the house had fired up a shrieking pain that pounded his temples. He returned to his house to try again to clean his car, but grew livid with anger once more: the stains had set and the smell had gotten worse in the heat of the garage.

There was no sign of the porn magazine the cops had found and brandished, as if it never existed except as a whip to flay him with. That seemed odd, and Gregory looked beneath the seats, in the glove box. The fucking thing was nowhere to be seen, nothing in the car but a stench as thick as cold mamaliga.

He had to sell the car, his beautiful creamy Avalon. He could never get the stink out. A thirty-five-thousand-dollar car turned to dross by the morons. The two cops were subhumans from the robot caste and Gregory would grind them beneath his heel as if he was stepping on ants.

Striving for calm in his writhing guts, he made himself walk to the utility sink in the corner to soak his hands in de-greasing soap. No, Gregory revised as his palms rubbed beneath the water. It wasn’t the ants. The real problem was the anthill. It wasn’t the two morons who had savaged him, it was the process that had created them, made them feel invincible. They were a Blue Tribe. Their own form of dress, symbols, rituals, special pledges and codes … all tribal.

Gregory returned to the cool of his house and recalled lessons from history. When one tribe wanted to inflict great hurt on another tribe, they killed its chief, a symbolic beheading of the entire tribe. Behead your enemy and jam his head on a pike, a dripping and fly-encrusted trophy that said I Win, You Lose.

Gregory suddenly felt a delicious calm in his tormented belly. He would humiliate the police, the Blue Tribe. It would take work, it would take planning, but he would behead the Mobile Police Department.

He would kill its Chief.

Moarte. Death.

Chapter 12

“I think I have all the information I need for my article, Dr Szekely,” the young reporter said. She clicked off her recorder and closed her pocket-sized notepad. “Is there anything else you want to add?”

Dr Sonia Szekely stared across her paper-strewn desk at her questioner: blonde, blue-eyed, skin the hue of a spring peach. The reporter wore a loose and flippy miniskirt, tank top, pink running shoes over short white socks, and represented the newspaper of a local university. I’ve got plenty to add, Szekely considered saying. If you’ve got the stomach for it, which I doubt. Instead, Szekely looked down at her age-wrinkled hands, fought her need to light a cigarette, and regarded the reporter with bemusement.

“How old are you, my dear?” Szekely asked. Her eyes wandered past the reporter to her overloaded bookshelves holding such titles as Ceauşescu’s Orphanages: a History of Hell, The Pathology of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and Psychic Damage in Early Childhood. Other titles were in Romanian.

“I’m twenty, Doctor. Almost twenty-one. Why?”

“The worst of what I’m telling you happened before you were born. The wretched Ceaușescu regime in Romania, the plight of the orphans, the decades of horror and human wreckage—”

“I got that, Doctor. About how Cacesku—”

“Ceaușescu,” Szekely corrected. “Nicolae Ceaușescu.”

“Sure,” the reporter nodded, flipping open her notepad to glance inside. “Ceaușescu wanted to grow the country’s workforce so he outlawed birth control and demanded large families, but the country was so desperately poor the children couldn’t be cared for and were placed in state-run orphanages.” The reporter wrinkled her button nose. “Nasty places.”

“Yes,” Szekely nodded, thinking, They were more than nasty, miss, they were hell on earth, a dark bloom of evil that poisons to this day.

“But what does my age have to do with that nasty moment in history, Doctor?”

Szekely felt her legs propel her to standing. Heard her voice grow loud.

“It’s not history!”

The reporter’s eyes went wide. Szekely waved her hand in apology and sat down again. Took a deep breath.

“Forgive me. My work means reliving events of that time almost daily. Plus I’m a bit fearful you’ll view these orphanages as having no more hand in our present lives than a faded newsreel from World War II. Yet they’re with us today. That’s the real story.”

The young woman frowned. “But if the Romanian orphanages have been changed and the children saved—”

“Physical salvation differs from psychic salvation. Physically, the children may have been removed from conditions of horror, but in many cases the horrors have not been removed from the children.”

“Sure, Doctor. Some poor kids probably have nightmares and things. I know I would if I’d started life like that.”

Szekely began to speak but closed her mouth. The intern reporter had most likely grown up in a bright home with a green lawn and white picket fence. Enjoyed large and healthy meals each day. Generations of adoring family would have surrounded and coddled her. Her bedroom held toys and dolls and lace curtains, cool in summer and warm in winter. She would have spoken at two years of age, walked at three, been in school at five. Interacting with her fellow humans would have been as natural as giggling.

Could the young woman in any way comprehend what happened to children who grew up in a box with no human interaction? Wallowing in their excretions? Feeding on slop, like hogs? Could the pretty young thing ever envision what some of these broken children became as they aged? It was an impossible task. Szekely knew; she had been studying such children for years and was herself still capable of awe at the horrors inflicted on the innocent.

Szekely looked into the eyes of the reporter, the woman’s pencil now tapping the notepad. She was impatient to get to her next assignment, something to do with a circus in town.

“I’ll see you to the door,” Szekely said, standing.

They strode along the hall to the reception area and out the door into a bright Gulf Coast morning. A faux-wood plaque on the side of the red-brick building said Coastways Behavioral Medicine, LLC. Beneath it were the names of several psychologists including Dr Sonia Szekely. Under Szekely’s banner a small sign proclaimed EEOSA.

The reporter thanked Szekely and promised to send a copy of the article when it was out, a month perhaps, or more, depending on how much of the paper would be devoted to sporting triumphs.

“Remember,” Szekely called to the woman’s departing back, “it’s not history. It lives with us today.”

But the reporter had already hidden inside her iPod. Szekely shook her head and watched the woman’s tiny silver Honda buzz from the lot. She was turning toward the building when her eyes fell across a familiar face in an automobile near the front of the lot. The face suddenly looked embarrassed and sank two inches, as if trying to hide below the dashboard.

Szekely waved and walked close. “Goodness, Ema, what are you doing here?”

“I, uh, was out driving and—”

“Needed to see me about something?”

The woman’s fingers drummed a nervous tattoo on the wheel. She started to speak, swallowed.

Szekely frowned. “Is anything wrong, Ema?”

“No … I mean, I uh … guess I just need some reassurance.” A sigh and a self-deprecating smile. “Like always, Doctor.”

Szekely grinned and nodded toward the offices. “I’ve got a group session at one, Ema. I’m yours until then. How about we grab some coffee and have a nice girl-to-girl chat? That should make things better.”

Chapter 13

Night had fallen. Gregory sat in his living room surrounded by pages he’d gathered from Google, copies of everything available on Chief Baggs, mostly mentions in newspaper articles. The data focused on Baggs the cop, which was fine, but Gregory wanted more: what centered the entity known as Carleton T. Baggs? Where did he live? How did he live? What patterns could be discerned in his life?

If it’s seven fifteen on a Tuesday evening in summer, Gregory thought, making notes as he went, where, statistically, would I expect to find Carleton T. Baggs?

When he’d pulled all the newspaper data on Baggs, Gregory frowned at the paucity of his file and considered where other information might be found. On a whim he tried YouTube, entering Baggs, Chief, Mobile, Alabama, Police.

Nothing.

But there was a hit on Mobile Alabama Police, one titled Det. Carson Ryder Lauded for Bravery. It had been logged into the system a couple days before by someone named Janet Wing. Gregory expanded the screen and hit Play.

He leaned back in his chair as the camera panned ranks of cops in a large room, some in uniform, others in street clothes, slack-jawed droolers getting taxpayer money to sit on their asses. The camera zoomed in on a slender, suited man standing from a front seat as someone called his name, Detective Carson Ryder. Ryder seemed about six feet tall, dark hair falling over his ears.

Gregory whispered “troglodyte” as Ryder approached the podium, his suit looking like it had cost fifty bucks with tie and shoes thrown in. The haircut was a ten-minute, ten-dollar job by a barber named Mort or Ralph. The knot of the Ryder-ape’s tie would have been more at home on a bowline.

But when the man forswore the step-stairs to the stage and took the half-meter jump as a natural extension of his stride, troglodyte suddenly didn’t fit. The man moved with a fluidity Gregory had noted in athletes, though nothing about him seemed particularly athletic save for shoulders a bit wider than the norm.

The man stepped into white light beside a podium. The camera panned left and Gregory’s breath froze in his throat. Baggs was the voice who had summoned Ryder to the podium. They touched palms in an imitation handshake and Baggs handed Ryder a framed certificate.

Gregory froze the video and studied his adversary, Baggs, a large man with veiled eyes and mottled skin, attempting to hide encroaching baldness with a comb-over, which merely served to highlight the condition. He looked stupid, which Gregory had expected, needing only a line of drool down his chin to complete the picture.

This is my quarry, Gregory thought as his heart increased its rhythm, burning the image in his brain. This man is dead. Gregory re-started the video, hoping for additional footage of Baggs.

But he found something more interesting. When the Ryder-cop took the certificate, the camera image widened to show an audience leaping to their feet with hands pounding. Ryder studied the crowd, then commenced what seemed to be a ritualized step-pattern, holding the award aloft. Was Ryder dancing? His action further inflamed the crowd. Somewhere in the room chanting started, the words indiscernible but clearly known by everyone.

Braka ros n’da hasun …

I faw telawan telawon

When Ryder finally stepped from the stage he was enveloped in a sea of cops. Baggs stood alone on the stage, looking shrunken, uncomfortable and even more stupid.

Puzzled by the contrast, Gregory did a Google search on Carson Ryder, discovering he’d been the youngest patrol officer to make detective, recipient of a dozen commendations for bravery and resourcefulness. He’d been an Officer of the Year when in uniform, had twice been Detective of the Year. Archived photos showed Ryder receiving commendations from the last four mayors, three chiefs of police, and two citizens’ groups.

Gregory closed his eyes and saw Ryder holding his victory citation high. He added the applause. The cheers. The chanting. The rush of the crowd when Ryder stepped from the stage. There could be only one conclusion …

The man named Carson Ryder was the Blue Tribe’s Warrior.

Though the Chief was the MPD’s head, Gregory realized, a warrior was the department’s heart. Baggs himself was meaningless, as replaceable as a hat. It showed in his face when the crowd ignored him to pay cheering tribute to Ryder.

It was Ryder who was irreplaceable. Thus it was Ryder who had to die. But Ryder couldn’t die in battle. That would turn him into a martyr. He had to die in the worst way possible for a warrior …

In shame.

Gregory turned his attention back to YouTube, saw one remaining video under Mobile Police Department. Four minutes and thirty-nine seconds in length, it carried the title of Random Nightmares. Gregory pressed Play.

Five minutes later Gregory had a perfect plan to destroy Carson Ryder.

Heart racing like he’d just found a cat in the trap, sweat glistening across his palms, Gregory stood and held his hands high, mimicking Ryder’s dance steps at the ceremony and aping the MPD’s praise chant.

“I faw telawan telawon … I faw telawan telawon …”

Harry and I spent several days working a case, trying to put the hammer down on a dope dealer who thought a nine-millimeter was the best way to deal with competition, a not-uncommon career move in the illicit-substances biz. We’d returned at six to read the newspaper. Alcohol was not allowed in the shop, which was why our beer cans were hidden in foam jackets.

Footsteps behind me turned into the Buddha walking our way in a three-piece suit, a smile on his round face, his head as bald as a melon: Don Shumuchuru.

“Don,” I said. “Great to hear your mom’s doing better.”

“They adjusted her meds and she’s like a new person. Thanks for handling the classes. And don’t worry, I’m back in the saddle again.”

“Pardon?”

“I’ll pick up on the sessions.” He grinned. “You just got two nights a week of your life returned, buddy.”

“Uh, thanks Don …”

Don shot me a thumbs up and retreated. Harry was staring at me across his coffee mug, an eyebrow cocked in interest.

“What?” I said to my partner.

“Looks like school’s out,” he said.

Chapter 14

Gregory was cross-legged on his living-room floor. He’d done an hour of Bowflex and taken a shower. Supper was protein powder with honey and three slices of organic wholewheat bread.

Beside him was his favorite object, a compound bow, its profile resembling a mechanical bat with outstretched wings. It had a sixty-pound pull that fired an arrow at over two hundred miles an hour. Gregory had asked the decorator if the bow might be hung over the fireplace in place of the scribble-painting, but the man’s face had told Gregory he was in one of those areas where he lacked understanding.

The bow had been a thirteenth-birthday gift from his stepfather so the two could enjoy deer season together. Gregory’s stepfather had grown up on a farm in central Alabama and when his parents died had inherited the six-hundred-acre tract. By that time he was living and working in Mobile, but he’d kept the farm, leasing it to tenant farmers and hunting in the two-hundred-acre woods. Whenever they went out together, the old man was always blabbing about how much he enjoyed hunting, loved the woods, loved the streams.

Over there, son, is where my father bagged a fourteen-point buck. How I loved to walk these woods with him, Gregory, and I wish I could have just one of those days back …

A tear rolling down the old man’s cheek, weird.

Gregory was fascinated by the word Love. The morons used it as if it meant so much, but also to mean very little. People said they loved other people. Some said they loved their automobiles. Others used the exact same word about canaries, or cats or dogs. People loved Mexican food. Or their shoes. Or a paint color. It was another trait of the morons that they had no solid meaning for a word they used like water.

Gregory had been to funerals where the word seemed to dominate … yayaya loved his children, yayayaya, a lover of humanity yayayaya we will miss his love yayayaya … and all the morons who had loved the piece of dead stuff laying in the box would cry and howl and moan and act like death had happened to them. The person was gone: find someone else to do what they did for you.

But no, it was Love, death, pain, love death pain … which was really pretty interesting when you thought about it.

Despite its liquid character, Love somehow had a big influence on the idiots, and Gregory knew whatever the word meant to the morons, it must have been something like what he applied to the bow. Probably even more: people said they would die for love, but there was no way Gregory would fucking die for the bow. It was, after all, just wood and metal and plastic. If it was him or the bow, the bow would be out the window justlikethat.

Gregory stopped thinking about Love – an un- understandable concept – and picked up his bow. He and his new gift had been inseparable for weeks, the boy caring less for hunting with his stepfather – and listening to all those stories – than waiting for the old man to go on some errand so Gregory could hide in the woods and shoot at everything that came into view: birds, rabbits, groundhogs, dogs …

Gregory had come close to being in trouble once when he shot a neighbor’s dog, but claimed he’d thought the yellow Lab was a coyote.

“Yellow Labs don’t look nothing like a coyote,” the neighbor had said. “That boy’s lyin’ through his teeth.”

“You hold it right there,” Gregory’s stepfather said. “Anyone can make a mistake.”

“My dog got shot twice, once in the hindquarters and once in the head. I think that boy crippled him for fun and killed him when he got bored.”

“You hold your tongue, now—”

“That dead-face kid may be some kind of mental wizard but that don’t make him right in the head, everyone in the county knows it too. You owe me five hundred bucks for the dog or I’m bringin’ the sheriff in.”

Gregory’s father had said nothing, but the bow disappeared. Gregory regained it two weeks later by telling his stepfather how much he loved hunting, especially with you and could we do it some more real soon? Please, Daddy?

He grinned at the memory. Call the limpy old fucker Daddy and Gregory could get anything he wanted, kind of like pulling Ema’s strings.

Kayla Ballard shook her strawberry-blonde hair over her shoulders and patted her face with a bandana, the air in the university’s greenhouse dense with humidity. She studied rows of five-inch-tall cotton plants in individual planters, making notes on their size and health. Each plant was graded on eight points and turned into statistical models.

“You getting all this, Kayla?” fellow student Harold Barkley asked.

“My 4-H project was more involved,” Kayla answered, hefting a heavy tray of plants like it was a shoebox. “This is simple.”

Barkley shook his head as he studied columns of figures he’d spend all night crunching. “Your senior 4-H project took this much math?”

“It wasn’t the senior project, Harold, it was the junior one. The senior one was a lot more complicated.”

Barkley pretended to make sobbing noises. Kayla’s cell phone rang and she plucked it from the back pocket of her jeans. She noted the caller and the smile broadened on her face.

“Hi, Daddy.” She covered the phone with her hand. “Run along, Harold. I’ll catch you tomorrow.”

“In class it’s us who are trying to catch you, Ballard.”

Kayla grinned and returned to her cell phone. “Yep, I’m here in the greenhouse, Daddy. Guess what? I got voted president of the ag club and I wasn’t even running …”

The pair talked for ten minutes and would talk again near ten p.m., before Kayla fell into bed. Kayla missed her father terribly. They had been inseparable since her mother passed away when she was seven, the victim of a drunk driver.

“… all right, Daddy. I’m heading to the dorm to start calculating all this stuff. I love you.”

Harold Barkley walked toward the dorms. Kayla would beat him on her bike, riding the wide sidewalk that served both pedestrians and bikers.

She rounded a bend to find the same curious sight she’d noticed for the second day in a row: a man staring into the trees with binoculars. A birdwatcher, she figured, goofy-looking in that big floppy hat and sunglasses. Yesterday she couldn’t tell if it was a guy or girl until she got closer. A guy, could have been twenty, could have been fifty, from all she could see of him.

Had a game leg, too. Favored it and carried a cane, sticking it under his arm to scan the terrain. All that to watch birds, which meant a person with dedication. As Kayla closed in, the glasses seemed to turn her way, then drift back to the trees. Kayla felt a camaraderie with the birder, out practicing his hobby on a hot evening like this.

Good for you, buddy, she thought, smiling and waving as she sped past.

Chapter 15

I looked at the classroom clock, almost nine already. How did the time fly by so fast? “OK, let’s wrap things up,” I said. “Questions?”

“Can we go back to the sociopath issue a bit?” Jason Kellogg said.

We’d spent two hours on securing crime scenes and its protocols – vital information, but nowhere near as tasty as discussing motivations of the Hillside Strangler or the Night Stalker. When you’ve eaten your cauliflower, you’ve earned a slice of pie.

“Sure,” I said. “Go ahead.”

“You mentioned the sociopath’s need for control. Why is control such a big deal?”

“Holliday has book learning in that area,” I said. “Let’s give her a shot.”

“Get it, girl,” Sanchez grinned. “School us.”

Holliday swallowed hard. She was in the front row and turned to address the bulk of the class. “Uh, well, many professionals think that by being controlling and manipulative, sociopaths reinforce their sense of superiority.”

Holliday looked at me. I said, “Keep going.”

“They’re in charge, ergo they’re the most powerful person in the relationship. Conversely, by being stupid enough to be manipulated, the other person is diminished.”

Jason Kellogg spoke up. “Why don’t people get tired of being jerked around?”

“The manipulation can be so subtle it’s not noticed, especially with intelligent socios. It’s an interesting problem to them – a project – pressing someone’s buttons without leaving fingerprints on the buttons.”

“Let me step in,” I said. “I watched a sociopath named Bobby Lee Crayline be hypnotized. He was dangerous to the extreme, guards in attendance. A guard ordered Crayline to sit for the procedure. He didn’t. When ordered to sit again, Crayline crouched slightly on bended knees. Without a second thought, the guard pushed the chair beneath Crayline’s butt and he sat.”

“So?” Pendel yawned. “The guard ordered the guy to sit and he sat.”

“It’s different,” Terrell Birdly said. “Crayline made the guard slide the chair under his ass.”

Pendel scowled. “Again, so what? The guy sat like he was told.”

A tittering, most of the class getting it. “You’re missing it, Wilbert,” Birdly said. “Crayline didn’t sit until the guard was manipulated into repositioning the chair.”

I nodded. “It was a tiny moment of meaningless control, but in Bobby Lee Crayline’s mind, it proved his superiority.”

Pendel shook his head and crossed his arms, refusing to believe it. Kellogg had his hand up. “You can hypnotize a sociopath?” he asked.

“Almost anyone is subject to hypnosis by a professional, though it’s easier to hypnotize subjects who want to be hypnotized or who have been prepared through a previous suggestion. Hypnosis isn’t something sociopaths generally like, because it’s putting someone else in control. Still, it can happen.” I shot a glance at the clock. “OK, good job. See you next time.”

Everyone started putting away their texts and electronic thingies except Holliday, who ambled towards me. She passed Pendel, who gave her a lascivious grin and whispered, “Gonna go suck teacher’s dick for an A?”

I heard every word; the poor geek couldn’t even whisper right.

“Grow up, Willy,” Holliday said, not looking at him. Two seconds later she was in front of me.

“You learned your lessons well, Wendy,” I said. “Good answers.”

“Thank you. Uh, listen Detective Ryder, I mean Carson, I was wondering if you might want to—”

“Well, well,” a big voice boomed. “I’d heard there was an encore performance.” Harry was leaning in the doorway, a Cheshire-cat grin on his face.

“I’ll get back to you,” Wendy said. “Next class maybe.” She scooted past Harry, saying hi. My partner spent a couple of self-indulgent seconds watching Holliday glide down the hall before turning to me.

“School’s still in session?”

I shrugged. “I figured I started it, so I should finish it. That’s the way it’s supposed to go, right?”

“I saw Shumuchuru in the property room laughing like he’d hit the daily double. He said you’d promised to take his next two all-night stakeouts if he let you finish teaching the course.”

Snitch. I said, “Um …”

“So how much of your return to the classroom is due to that pretty little lady who just walked away?”

Harry had been my best friend for a decade. He knew everything about me, including things I either didn’t know or didn’t acknowledge.

“Ten per cent,” I sighed. “Maybe fifteen.”

“And the other eighty-five to ninety per cent?”

“I actually enjoy the class.”

“Which should be celebrated,” Harry said. “I’m thinking beer.”

We settled on a cheapie bar a few blocks distant and I finished putting my materials away. We were heading out the door when my cell trilled, screen showing Tom Mason.

“You still at the academy, Carson?” Tom asked.

“I’ve been arguing pedagogical theory with an fellow academician, Tom,” I said, winking at Harry. “What can Professor Nautilus and I do for you?”

“Harry’s there? Good. A body was just found along a bike path near there, by the university …”

Chapter 16

Harry’d parked in a lot one building over so we jumped in my truck and stuck the flasher to the roof. Three heart-pounding minutes later I sailed past a pair of cruisers, uniformed officers setting flares to divert traffic.

A hundred feet further I saw scene techs circling an object on the ground and pulled over. The area was lit by headlamps from the cruisers and we felt a rush of relief at seeing Holliday at the periphery, looking unsteady but alive. She had a bright orange helmet in one hand, the other was holding up a bicycle.

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