The Killing Game. J. Kerley A.
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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.
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,