The Killing Game
Detective Carson Ryder’s reputation is on the line when a sociopathic serial killer embarks on a personal vendetta, constructing his crimes to hit Carson’s weak spot.He’s coming to get you…After a humiliating encounter with a cop, Romanian immigrant Gregory Nieves launches a vendetta against the Mobile Police Department, Alabama. Nieves can’t fight a department, so he selects one man who symbolizes all men in blue: Carson Ryder, the MPD’s specialist in bizarre and twisted crimes.Carson has never seen a killing spree like this one: Nothing connects the victims, the murder weapon is always different, and the horrific crime scenes are devoid of evidence. It almost seems he’s being taunted. Even laughed at.Carson doesn’t know it yet, but he is caught up in a sadistic game of life and death. And there can only be one victor…
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The Killing Game
J.A. Kerley
To Alexa and John, Have a spectacular voyage
Table of Contents
âIt sounds like a helluva movie,â David Letterman was saying to the popular movie actor. âGreat cast â¦â
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 â who had a wife and three small children â about a rumored affair with his latest co-star.
âI guess Iâd be remiss in my hostly duties if I didnât ask about your relationship with your lovely co-star, Maria Glassier. You guys shared, uh, a love scene or two, right?â
The audience gasped, tittered, awaited the reply. Gregory pressed Play on the machine. The actorâs faces began â¦
Face one: the actorâs 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 couldnât be followed in the mirror. But heâd 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 actorâs lips tightened, eyes rolling heavenward, eyebrows flicking, the head cocking to a thirty-degree angle.
Gregoryâs first attempts felt ragged; the head-cock started before the lip-tightening, or he forgot the eyebrow lift after the eye-roll. Gregoryâs 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 â¦
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 actorâs smile widened until it eclipsed every other feature on his face.
âIâm afraid weâre just good friends, Dave,â the actor said.
The audience laughed and applauded. Gregory put his hand over the actorâs lower face. Without the distraction of the tooth-bright smile and uplifted cheeks, the actorâs eyes were points of angry fire. Gregory knew the actor wanted to grab Lettermanâs 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. Gregoryâs 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 Someoneâs 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 Iâm Glad Youâre Here and flicked out the light.
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. Iâd 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 werenât doing too bad either, but then it was Saturday night.
