The Killing Game

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.