Kill Game

by Cordelia Kingsbridge

  Though Luis conked out right away, sleep eluded Dominic for much longer. He stared up at the shadowed ceiling, listening to Luis breathe, and tried to remember the last time he’d hooked up with a man his own age, at least since he’d been Luis’s age himself.

  He couldn’t.

  The briefing room buzzed with early-morning activity: shuffling papers, metal chairs scraping across a linoleum floor, loud yawns and sleepy chatter as people took their seats. Levi dropped into his usual spot near the front and handed Martine a cup of coffee, which she accepted with a grateful sigh.

  “All right, everyone, settle down,” Sergeant James Wen said, addressing them from a podium at the front of the room. A Chinese American man in his early fifties, he had short black hair with a touch of silver at the temples and a few deep lines around the corners of his eyes. He stood with the ramrod-straight posture of a military veteran turned cop, clean-shaven and with every element of his suit immaculate even at this early hour on a Monday morning.

  The people in attendance, a mix of detectives, uniformed officers, and ancillary staff, quieted down and gave him their attention. Levi rubbed his bleary eyes as he drank some coffee; he hadn’t slept well last night after yet another nightmare had woken him in a cold sweat.

  “Our first priority is the series of murders that have been investigated by Detectives Valcourt and Abrams within the past week.” Wen flipped a large folio open on the podium. “At this time, considering the distinct and numerous similarities between the crime scenes, it is reasonable to conclude that they are the work of a serial killer.”

  “Yeah, the Seven of Spades,” Jonah Gibbs called out from his seat near the back. He still sported a nice shiner on his left eye, courtesy of Anna Granovsky’s well-aimed punch three days earlier.

  “What did you say?” Levi asked, twisting around in his chair.

  “That’s the playing card he leaves at the crime scenes, right?” Gibbs said with a shrug. “He’s the Seven of Spades.”

  “First of all,” said Levi, “we don’t know it’s a he, and using the masculine pronoun will only prejudice our thought process. Second . . .” He turned back to speak to Wen directly. “We can’t give this person a catchy nickname. This killer craves attention—it’s why they pose the bodies, leave a calling card. Why they went out of their way to ensure Goodwin’s body was found. When you name a thing, you give it power. We’ll just be feeding their ego.”

  “Duly noted, Detective Abrams,” Wen said. “But you know as well as I do that it’s human nature to name things. I can make sure that nicknames aren’t used in any official documentation, but trying to stop people from using them in conversation is a losing battle.”

  When Levi drew a deep breath to object further, Martine’s hand landed on his thigh and squeezed hard. He winced and shut his mouth with poor grace.

  Though Wen’s lips twitched, he gave no other sign that he’d noticed Martine’s intervention. “According to the coroner’s office, all three victims’ throats were slit from left to right, indicating a right-handed killer. Incised wounds like these don’t tell us much about the weapon itself, but since the blade has yet to be found, and all three victims’ wounds are so similar, we’re probably looking at the same weapon used in each murder. It’s safe to presume the killer still has it in their possession.”

  “I heard that the vics were drugged first.” Kelly Marin was sitting right in the front row, studiously taking notes. “Has that been confirmed?”

  Wen nodded to Levi, who said, “Yes, tox reports confirm that each victim had large amounts of ketamine in their systems when they died, certainly enough to induce dissociation and paralysis. In each case, the ketamine was introduced orally—in Dreyer’s glass of scotch, and in bottles of beer that Goodwin and Campbell had been drinking.”

  Martine picked it up from there. “The killer may have drugged the victims’ drinks without their knowledge, which would mean that the victims found them non-threatening. Or the victims could have been forced to drink the drugged beverages, perhaps at gunpoint or in the face of another threat. There are no defensive wounds or signs of struggle on any of the bodies, so the killer didn’t come into unwanted physical contact with them until after they’d been drugged.”

  “Which brings us to another point,” Wen said, turning a page in his folio. “These crime scenes were some of the cleanest I’ve ever seen. We have yet to find a single fingerprint, fiber, or trace of DNA that can’t be eliminated against a legitimate source. The killer exited and entered each scene without raising any red flags or leaving any electronic record of their identity. Even the security camera footage from the gas station where Goodwin’s credit card was used had been erased by the time we got a warrant for it. We’re dealing with someone intelligent, calm, and well-organized, and they know what they’re doing.”

  “We’re working on the assumption that the killer considers themselves a vigilante?” asked Troy Burton, a fellow detective.

  Wen nodded. “The strongest commonality the victims share is that they had allegedly committed serious crimes, though none had any formal convictions on their records.”

  “Which could have been the motivating factor in and of itself,” Levi pointed out. “Billy Campbell had wriggled out of convictions for domestic violence and battery on multiple occasions. The investigation into Phillip Dreyer had gone on for over a year and a half with no real move to formally charge him. And Matthew Goodwin fled the city before he could be tried. These men hadn’t just committed crimes—they were, from a certain perspective, getting away with them.”

  A thoughtful murmur rippled through the room. Wen waited for the noise to die down before saying, “Investigating murders like these requires a different approach from an ordinary homicide investigation. Unlike the vast majority of homicides, these men were unlikely to have had a relationship with their killer. Rather than look at the victims’ lives to see who may have had a personal motivation to kill them, we need to analyze every aspect of the murders themselves to draw conclusions about the killer’s identity.”

  “I hate to say this,” Martine said, “but vigilante-style murders of criminal scum, spotless crime scenes, tracking down a fugitive even local bounty hunters couldn’t find . . . This feels like someone with a law enforcement background to me.”

  “Agreed,” Wen said wearily. “Other likely possibilities include military or legal backgrounds. Let’s not forget that the Dreyer investigation wasn’t public knowledge, and if that was indeed the reason he was targeted, the killer probably has sources inside the LVMPD or the DA’s office. Or both.”

  Levi wasn’t the only one to shift in discomfort at that thought. “We’ve started compiling a preliminary list of people in the area who have criminal records that share characteristics with these murders—we’re banking on the likelihood that the killer didn’t jump straight into homicide. We’ll be paying special attention to assaults motivated by a sense of justice or righteousness on the part of the perpetrator. Suspects with law enforcement or military experience will be moved up the list.”

  “Good,” said Wen. “Narcotics will be coordinating with us on the ketamine angle; they should have a report by the end of the day. Detectives Valcourt and Abrams will be taking point on this investigation, so please direct any questions their way and follow their lead.” He flipped a few more pages, cleared his throat, and said, “Now, on to Saturday’s suspicious death at the Bellagio . . .”

  While the serial murders were their team’s highest priority, they weren’t their only cases. The meeting continued for another hour before adjourning. Levi and Martine returned to their desks in the bullpen and threw themselves into research mode, continuing the tedious process of creating a suspect pool.

  They’d been at it for a while when the phone on Levi’s desk rang. He picked up the receiver without looking away from his computer. “Detective Abrams.”

  “Hello, Detective,” said an eerie electronic voice. “I heard that you’re looking for m
e.”

  Levi went still. “Who is this?”

  “You know who I am. You’ve been studying my work.”

  He shot to his feet, snapping his fingers to get the attention of the people nearest him and pressing the speakerphone button. “Is this the man who killed Phillip Dreyer?” he asked, and everyone else in the room fell silent. Martine got to her feet as well, her eyes wide.

  There was a pause on the other end of the line. “You want me to confirm or deny my gender. You’re smart, Detective. But I’m smarter. Yes, I killed Phillip Dreyer. Matthew Goodwin. Billy Campbell.”

  Holy fuck. Levi took a steadying breath. “Can you prove that?”

  “I left you my card. It was trickier than I’d anticipated, gluing Goodwin’s hand to it and the bottle.”

  Levi rubbed one hand down his face as he strove to remain calm. Martine hurried away from her desk, speaking to nearby officers in a frantic whisper. All over the bullpen, people were murmuring into phones, fingers flying over keyboards—alerting superiors and tracing the call, as was protocol.

  “Why are you calling me?”

  “I want to make a deal.”

  “What kind of deal?”

  “I want the details of my executions released to the press,” said the voice. “Not everything, if you’d like to hold certain things back. But I want the people of Las Vegas to know about me.”

  Levi stared at the phone in disbelief. Across the room, Martine waved a hand at him and then lifted a legal pad with the word BURNER scrawled across it in giant capital letters. Unsurprising, but discouraging—it meant the name and billing address associated with the cell phone, if any, would be nonsense.

  “I know you must have at least some knowledge of police procedure,” he said. “So you must know we don’t negotiate with criminals.”

  The killer chuckled, which came out as a bizarre grating noise through whatever voice changer they were using. “Of course you do. It happens every day when you let child abusers and drug dealers plea down for lighter sentences and less serious charges.”

  “That’s a necessary component of the justice system. And I haven’t heard what you would be offering in return.”

  Martine waved to him again and showed him another message: ON THE STRIP. Levi suppressed a sigh. They could track cell phones to within about three hundred feet of the signal, but there were thousands of people moving up and down the Strip right now, both on foot and in cars. Without knowing who they were looking for, the location wasn’t helpful. They couldn’t stop everyone on the Strip who was on a cell phone.

  “If you release the details to the press,” the voice said, “I give you my word that I won’t kill anyone for the next five days.”

  Utter silence.

  Levi worked his mouth open and shut a few times before he remembered how to form words. “Why would you promise that?”

  “I told you. I want people to know about my mission.” There was no emotional inflection in the electronic voice, which only made the passionate statements creepier. “I want the people of this city to know I’m on their side, and the animals to know I’m coming for them.”

  He considered the word choices the killer had made over the course of the conversation. “You referred to your murders as executions. Do you consider them just?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “No. You don’t have the right to decide who lives or dies, no matter what kind of people they may be.”

  “I disagree. The human species has a responsibility to purge its diseased. Like cutting off moldy bread before it ruins the entire loaf.”

  Levi felt cold all the way down to his bones; looking around the room, he could see his own revulsion reflected on the faces of his colleagues. He couldn’t think of a single thing to say in response.

  “I would never harm a good person,” the killer went on. “All I want is to make this city safer, same as you.”

  “You think that the public will empathize, don’t you?” Levi said. “You don’t just want attention. You want support.”

  This time, there was an even longer pause than the one before. The killer obviously wasn’t worried about being found, even though there had to be patrol cops and black-and-whites combing the Strip for them by now.

  “I thought I might get that from you, Detective Abrams.”

  “Why would you possibly think that?”

  “Because you know what it’s like. You killed that man who threatened to murder a child.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Levi saw Martine take three quick steps toward him and then stop, her face clouded with worry. He gripped the edge of his desk with one hand for balance, hyper-conscious of every person in the room staring at him. “I didn’t want to do that. I had no choice.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “That’s not the same—”

  “Did you enjoy it?”

  Blood roared in Levi’s ears. He slumped sideways against his desk, unable to force any words out of his dry throat.

  “I think you did, Detective Abrams,” the killer said, their voice a shade quieter. “I think that in the moment you shot that man, you felt nothing but satisfaction.”

  Levi still couldn’t speak. He could barely draw breath.

  “You have twenty-four hours to contact the press. I’ve already chosen my next target. They can die tomorrow night, or they can have a few more days to spend with their loved ones. It’s up to you.”

  The click of the call disconnecting was as loud as a gunshot in the horrified hush that had fallen over the room.

  “There’s not much I can do with this,” Carmen Rivera said as she played around with the recording of the serial killer’s call on her computer. Though fresh out of college, she was already one of their best tech analysts. Her black hair was usually piled on top of her head in a messy bun, and her lips were permanently chapped from chewing on them.

  “You can’t— I don’t know, reverse it?” Levi asked. He was out of his depth here; his years as a detective had never involved killers calling him directly with disguised voices.

  Carmen shook her head. “Back to the person’s real voice? No way. The masking algorithm destroyed too much information in the conversion process. That can’t be reversed. What I can do, though, is compare two samples if the killer contacts you again using this algorithm and confirm that it’s the same person. Also, people can change their voices, but it’s much harder to change your actual speech patterns. So theoretically, you might recognize the person that way if you met them in real life.”

  “Sergeant Wen is on his way back to the substation.” Martine hung up her cell as she turned toward them. “He was meeting with the Lieutenant to brief him on the case. I told him it just got a whole lot worse.”

  “Are you going to take the Seven of Spades’s offer?” Carmen asked.

  God, not her too. Levi bit back an annoyed response. They still had an audience—people who had witnessed the conversation first-hand as well as others, like Gibbs, who had heard about it as the news spread through the substation and been drawn back to the bullpen in their curiosity.

  “We can’t,” Martine said, saving Levi the headache of coming up with an answer that wasn’t inflammatory. “It would cause a panic, not to mention create the possibility of copycat murders. Plus, it would set a bad precedent. Negotiating with the killer once will only incentivize them to try for more in the future.”

  “And the person they threatened to kill?”

  “We can’t take responsibility for that,” said Levi. It was the right answer, the counselor-approved answer, though it was mostly bullshit. If the killer did murder someone tomorrow night, he, Martine, and even Wen would feel the weight of that death forever. That didn’t change what they had to do. “We’re not giving this killer special treatment just because they target people who have committed crimes. Nobody is above the law.”

  “That’s not really true, though, is it?” Gibbs’s pale face flushed easily, and he was pinking up now. “If Drey
er hadn’t been so rich and powerful, Financial Crimes would have moved on him months ago. And everyone knew that Campbell was beating the shit out of his wife, but we could never make the charges stick. At least the Seven of Spades is doing something.”

  Martine stared at him incredulously. “By committing murder.”

  Gibbs threw his hands in the air and said, “I’m not saying it’s right. Of course it’s not. But I get it, you know? I understand it a hell of a lot more than I understand selling drugs to kids or raping an unconscious woman or shooting up a neighborhood of innocent people in a fucking gang war.”

  Martine and Gibbs continued arguing, but it was clear from the expressions in the gathered group that Gibbs had sympathizers. And that, Levi knew, was the problem—if this serial killer’s crimes were made public, they would receive support. While most people would condemn cold-blooded murder, many would still empathize with the motivation.

  Vigilantism appealed to the darker side of human nature, the thirst for primal justice that knew no constraints. This killer was banking on that, maybe even expecting law enforcement to be less diligent in their search because of it.

  Not on Levi’s watch.

  “When you look at me, do you think Daddy?” Dominic asked Carlos on Monday night.

  Carlos coughed up a mouthful of beer, then grabbed a paper towel to wipe his chin. He gave Dominic a startled glance that turned thoughtful as his eyes swept Dominic from head to toe.

  “Yeah, kinda,” he said.

  Having expected to be laughed off, Dominic opened his mouth only to make a strangled, indignant noise.

  “Oh, come on, Dom.” Carlos flapped a hand in his direction. “You’re a big, muscley dude, you’ve got the chest hair going on, the gravelly voice . . . How did this become a topic of conversation, exactly?”

  Dominic sighed and scratched Rebel’s ears. She was sitting on his right foot, leaning her entire weight against his leg, her head propped on his knee.