One-Eyed Royals

by Cordelia Kingsbridge

  “You’re never going to believe this,” Dominic said.

  Every computer in the bullpen crackled with deafening static, loud enough to drown out all conversation. Seconds later, all the monitors went black.

  People called to each other in confusion, the air filled with the noise of clattering keyboards and clicking mouses. A chill of premonition skittered over Levi’s skin like a cold wind.

  Against the far wall stood a rolling computer cart with an enormous flat-screen monitor, used for group presentations and briefings. It emitted one more attention-getting burst of static and then displayed the image of a bland, empty motel room—beige walls, faded floral bedspread, an insipid landscape in a scratched wooden frame.

  “Good afternoon,” said the Seven of Spades.

  Cries of alarm sounded throughout the bullpen. Levi clutched Dominic’s elbow, flashing back to that harrowing room and the television screen from which the Seven of Spades had tormented them both. This could not be happening again—

  Dominic rested his hand on top of Levi’s and squeezed reassuringly. A few feet away, Martine hit the silent alarm on Levi’s desk that alerted the entire LVMPD to an incoming Seven of Spades communication.

  “I apologize for disturbing your workday, but it’s come to my attention that Detective Levi Abrams has recently fallen under suspicion for my own crimes.”

  Levi restrained an eye roll. It had come to their attention, sure, like that hadn’t been precisely their goal all along.

  “Given a few minutes of your time, I can disprove that theory. But first—Detective Valcourt?”

  Martine, who had been silently directing the personnel in the bullpen with hand gestures and mouthed words, startled badly. “Yes?”

  “Please name a number between one and five.”

  “Uh . . . four?”

  A thickly gloved hand extended four fingers in front of the camera. Several people gasped; one officer jumped out of her chair, which slid backward along the linoleum and crashed into the desk behind her.

  “Detective Freeman, the same request, please.”

  Visibly shaken at being addressed by a serial killer, Freeman hesitated for a moment before saying, “Two.”

  The Seven of Spades repeated their trick. “As you can see, it’s impossible for this to be a recording. Detective Valcourt, could you please confirm that Detective Abrams is physically present in the bullpen at this exact moment?”

  “Yes, he’s just a few feet away from me.”

  “Thank you. Let’s begin.”

  The camera swiveled ninety degrees to show a woman slumped in a chair—Carolyn Royce.

  Exclamations of surprise and disbelief were uttered across the room. “Find out where that feed is coming from!” Martine hissed at a uniformed officer, who bolted out of the bullpen like his ass was on fire.

  Carolyn wasn’t bound, but she wasn’t moving other than to breathe and occasionally blink. Her glassy eyes stared into nothingness, and there was a vacant expression on her face. She’d been drugged with ketamine.

  “Now that Ms. Rivera has been freed from the shackles of a bloated, useless bureaucracy, you’d be amazed how quickly she can locate people who don’t want to be found. Dragging Ms. Royce from her hidey-hole was a bit more difficult, but one of the consequences of betraying everyone around you is that there’s nobody there to help when someone like me comes knocking at your door.”

  “We have to stop this,” Dominic muttered to Levi.

  “How?”

  Martine stepped toward the monitor. “So you have Carolyn Royce. Do you still have Scott West?”

  Beside Levi, Dominic sucked in a breath, his body going rigid.

  “Oh, him?” the Seven of Spades said carelessly. “He tried to escape, so I had to shoot him in the head. A shame, because it wasn’t what I’d planned, but I had no choice. He was getting boring, anyway.”

  A frisson of surprise ran through Dominic, but he remained silent. Martine was the only one in the bullpen who looked more confused than disgusted by this casual pronouncement. Levi averted his eyes before she could turn to him, knowing he wouldn’t be able to disguise his reaction well enough to fool her.

  “Now, returning to the matter at hand—if there’s anyone present who still doubts Ms. Royce’s guilt, let me set your minds at ease.”

  The feed cut to a recording in which the camera stood at the exact same angle and Carolyn sat in the same chair. The only difference was that in the recording, Carolyn was awake, alert, and bound to the chair at her wrists and ankles. She held herself with the terrified stillness of an animal cornered by a predator, eyeing someone who stood behind and to the side of the camera.

  “You know this won’t be admissible in any court of law,” she said.

  The Seven of Spades just laughed, an eerie, menacing rasp as translated through their voice changer. Carolyn blanched. She was trembling, but she kept her chin up as she directed her gaze to the camera.

  “Nathan and I married in our late twenties. We’d decided to wait a few years before having children, but I got pregnant unintentionally within the first year of our marriage. Nathan wanted me to have an abortion. He convinced me that we weren’t ready, that a child at that point would derail our careers—mine especially. I agreed.”

  Her eyes darted toward the Seven of Spades for a moment.

  “But as the years went by and he gave me one excuse after another, I realized there was more at work. When I confronted him, he admitted that he’d lied when we got engaged—he didn’t want children, and never intended on having them. He’d married me under false pretenses and had persuaded me to terminate what he knew full well might be the only pregnancy I’d ever have.”

  “Why didn’t you divorce him?”

  With a bitter smile, she said, “I thought I still loved him. And I believed it was too late, anyway. I didn’t want to have a child on my own, and I was thirty-four by that point. The time it would have taken to start fresh, find someone new, settle down again . . .” She shrugged miserably.

  “But you never forgave him, did you?” the Seven of Spades asked.

  “No. After that, I began seeing him in a different light. I realized what a coward he was, how spineless, how selfish. He has no principles; the only thing he cares about is his own comfort. He came to disgust me. And then, not only was he stupid enough to knock up his twenty-four-year-old assistant, he had the gall to try to do to her what he’d done to me!”

  “You had to punish him for that.”

  “I couldn’t bear another day with him. He’d ruined my life; he deserved the same.” Carolyn’s fear faded as it was eclipsed by her rage—a rage that, after decades in a pressure-cooker of resentment and loathing, had poisoned her mind. Her hatred for her husband straightened her spine and strengthened her voice, transforming her from the Seven of Spades’s victim into the ruthless woman who had arranged a kidnapping ring to wreak vengeance on the man she blamed for a lifetime of disappointment. “Besides, he owed me a child. It was only fair.”

  “I don’t disagree. You betrayed your husband, but he betrayed you first—and to be frank, he sounds like an asshole. I admire the way you set him up to be felled by his own incompetency and selfishness. The enucleation of the victims was a little over the top, but then, that may be hypocritical of me.”

  All of Carolyn’s focus was on the person behind the camera now. A small ray of hope shone in her eyes.

  “But you promised a desperate young pregnant woman that you would protect her, provide for her, and then you double-crossed her,” said the Seven of Spades, their tone abruptly hardening. “You intended all along to kidnap her and kill her once you’d gotten what you wanted. That’s something for which there can be no redemption.”

  Carolyn’s terror returned in force. Her skin whitened; her hands clawed around the arms of her chair. “I wasn’t going to kill her! Once the child and I were safe, I would have let her go home.”

  “You’re lying.”

  Mo
vement sounded off-screen. Carolyn shrieked and recoiled in her chair as much as her restraints allowed.

  “No, please! Please don’t, I haven’t seen your face, you don’t—”

  The recording ended, and the monitor once more depicted the current moment in time. Carolyn drooped in her chair, drugged into a dissociative paralysis, awaiting her inevitable execution.

  The camera zoomed in until it was showing only her head and neck. The Seven of Spades walked behind her, no more than a dark, shadowy shape in the background. This time, when they extended their hand, they were holding a knife whose wicked blade glinted in the dim light.

  Carolyn’s eyes shifted. She couldn’t move, but she was awake, and while her thoughts were surely an intoxicated jumble, there must have been part of her that knew what was happening. She knew she was about to die, and could do nothing to stop it.

  “Oh my God, Levi,” Martine moaned. Everyone else in the bullpen seemed to have frozen in horror.

  “Stop!” Levi hurried forward, addressing the monitor. He wasn’t sure if the Seven of Spades had eyes in here, but they’d recognize his voice regardless. “Don’t do this, please. Just leave her where she is, get away, and then tell me where to find her. She said herself that she hasn’t seen your face. You don’t have to kill her.”

  “I know I don’t have to.” The Seven of Spades set the knife to Carolyn’s throat. “I want to.”

  “Don’t. Please. You’ve made your point—I’m not the Seven of Spades. We get it.”

  “This could all be an act,” the killer said, surprising Levi into silence. “Look around you, Detective. How many friendly faces do you see?”

  Baffled, Levi scanned the bullpen—and realized that, with the exception of Dominic and Martine, there wasn’t a single person present who he could call more than a mere acquaintance at best. At worst, like Freeman, some were unambiguously hostile toward him.

  “I could be any one of a number of people loyal to you who you sent here to pretend to be the Seven of Spades—people who aren’t in the room with you right now. You and I could have rehearsed this entire scene in advance. If I leave things here, if I allow you to persuade me to spare her life, there will always be people who believe that this was all for show. The only way to truly clear your name is for me to kill Ms. Royce while your colleagues can see that your hands are clean.”

  Whether anyone would really have thought that didn’t matter now. By introducing the possibility, the Seven of Spades had ensured that there were people who already did. Levi could see it on their faces.

  “I don’t care,” he said. “This isn’t how we prove guilt or innocence. I don’t want this.”

  “That’s too bad.” With one swift, clean stroke, the Seven of Spades slit Carolyn Royce’s throat.

  Screams resounded throughout the bullpen. One of the officers doubled over and vomited into a trash can; several more people ran out of the room, crying and gagging. Martine crossed herself, tears streaming down her stricken face.

  Dominic came up behind Levi and put both hands on his shoulders—to restrain him from flying into a frenzied rage, most likely.

  Levi watched the blood gush from Carolyn’s throat, watched the life drain from her eyes until all that was left was a soulless shell. He was angry—with the Seven of Spades for perpetuating this nightmare, with himself for being unable to stop it. There was a point at which his reaction to this would have been to throw the monitor to the ground and smash it to pieces. But as he watched Carolyn die, a new emotion welled up and overshadowed everything else.

  Contempt.

  “You’re pathetic,” he said.

  There was a rustling noise on the monitor, then a brief silence. “I beg your pardon?”

  Levi spoke with a clarity of thought he hadn’t felt in months. “You pretend you’re a righteous crusader on a mission for justice, picking up where the law leaves off. But I see you for what you really are. You’re a sad, empty person who’s scrambling for attention any way you can get it.”

  A few people gasped behind him, but Levi didn’t turn around.

  “You don’t care what the people you murder have done. It’s just optics, part of the game you’re playing—the legend you’re trying to create. I’m sure you enjoy killing, but it’s the power of having the city in your thrall that you love most. You want people to fear you, be in awe of you, believe that you’re larger than life. You’re constantly high on your own drama, but it’s never quite enough, is it? That’s why you have to keep escalating, why you have to make each gesture more dramatic and theatrical than the one before. No matter how much attention you get, it’ll never be enough for whatever emptiness you’re trying to fill. It’s pathetic.”

  The only sound the Seven of Spades made was their heavy breathing.

  “I’m not playing this game with you anymore,” Levi said calmly. “You may be smart and skilled, but you’re a person, not a myth. And like any person, you are fallible. Eventually, you’ll make a mistake, and I will stop you.”

  “Careful, Detective.” The Seven of Spades’s electronically altered voice was a low, harsh growl. “If you back the wrong horse, you may lose everything.”

  This time, Levi didn’t bother hiding the roll of his eyes. “Yeah, all right. I know you enjoy your gambling metaphors and cutesy wordplay. So how about this?” He stepped right up to the monitor. “At the end of the day, you’re just another homicidal nutjob who’s one card short of a full deck. There’s nothing special about you. When I find you, they will lock you up, lose the key, and the only time anyone will ever talk about you will be while remembering what a sick, miserable, broken human being you were.”

  He hit the power button on the monitor. The screen went dark.

  Levi’s mind was clear and resolute. The Seven of Spades had maintained the upper hand for too long because he’d allowed himself to be demoralized by their mythology, to buy into the legend of an elusive and borderline-prescient mastermind, as if their intelligence and monstrosity rendered them superhuman.

  But the Seven of Spades was human—a human killer with human frailties.

  Catching killers was always what Levi had done best.

  “So.” Levi turned to a sea of shocked faces, Martine’s determined expression, Dominic’s proud smile. “Has anyone else had just about enough of this motherfucker?”

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  With thanks to Mathilde M., winner of the Kill Game design-a-character prize, for the character of Christelle Perrot!

  Seven of Spades series

  Kill Game

  Trick Roller

  Cash Plays

  A Chip and a Chair (coming soon)

  Can’t Hide From Me

  Cordelia Kingsbridge has a master’s degree in social work from the University of Pittsburgh, but quickly discovered that direct practice in the
field was not for her. Having written novels as a hobby throughout graduate school, she decided to turn her focus to writing as a full-time career. Now she explores her fascination with human behavior, motivation, and psychopathology through fiction. Her weaknesses include opposites-attract pairings and snarky banter.

  Away from her desk, Cordelia is a fitness fanatic, and can be found strength training, cycling, and practicing Krav Maga. She lives in South Florida but spends most of her time indoors with the air conditioning on full blast!

  Connect with Cordelia:

  Tumblr: ckingsbridge.tumblr.com

  Twitter: @c_kingsbridge

  Facebook: facebook.com/Cordelia.Kingsbridge

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