The Killing Game (29 page)

Dazed and milling onlookers were being herded away so tape could be strung. I saw Sergeant Howell Beauchamps walking from the front door and shaking his head. He gave me the two-beat appraisal I was growing tired of getting used to.

“Woman in her late forties, early fifties, Ryder. Looks like she was minding the store, a realtor. It’s bad.”

“The same MO as the others?”

“Guess you’d know that better than I would. I been hearing and reading how you—”

“Not now,” I said, stepping inside. The anteroom held a small desk which had been upended, a chair beside it. The carpet was beige, though large swaths were blood red. So were parts of the wall.

The body was in an upstairs bedroom, sprawled across the floor. The back of her blue blouse was in strips that I knew would match the long slashes across her back displaying meat and muscle.

I didn’t need to see more and headed out, careful where I put my feet. I saw Harry talking to Gilly Fortner, the young forensics tech. She was holding a curved sword in her gloved hands, its blade dappled with red.

“He left his weapon, Carson,” Harry said.

“Where?”

“It was in the bougainvillea beside the driveway,” Gilly said. “Stuck in the ground.”

“A sword sure fits Kavanaugh’s classic-battle concept.”

I scrutinized the wickedly curved blade and saw small shreds of green. I turned my eyes to the front yard of the model home with its curb-appeal plantings of crepe myrtle, dogwood and azalea.

“Some of the bushes have been whacked, bro,” I said to Harry. “Chopped with the sword.” I slashed an imaginary sword at a lopsided myrtle.

Harry frowned. “He was doing a Jack Sparrow thing?”

“I’m picturing this.” I mimicked crossing from the front door of the house to the driveway, slashing at plants along the way. I mimed sticking the sabre in the ground and entering an imaginary vehicle.

“He’s gone from
woo-woo-woo
to
yo-ho-ho
,” Harry said.

“Swinging the sabre in broad daylight with no fear of being seen,” I said, looking at the few surrounding homes, empty and awaiting buyers. “He either knew no one was watching or didn’t care. Either way, it shows a major lack of caution. But why?”

“Decompensating?” Harry said. “Losing psychological control?”

“That’s too clinical,” I said, studying the beheaded bushes. “Something’s pushed him into full-freak mode.”

I heard my name called and saw Clarence Beekman, a scene tech, waving me to the front door. “There were some business cards under the table, plus we found her purse in the top of a closet. Name’s Muriel Pendel.”

I felt a cold wind blow up my spine. “I know a kid with that name. He’s studying at the academy, a recruit.”

“You don’t think…”

“I got no idea,” I said, pulling my cell and calling Al Leighton, director of the academy.

“What’s up, Carson?” he said. “You cancelling class because of, uh, that thing in the newspaper?”

“I’m still in, Al. Could you check Wilbert Pendel’s next-of-kin listing, please?”

I heard keystrokes over the phone. “Pendel lists father and mother, Bert and Muriel Pendel, 3482 Oakmont Drive, Mobile. You want the numbers?”

Though prepared for the worst, I felt as though I’d been kicked in the stomach.

“Just the father’s, Al.”

I walked to a picnic table in the back and made the call. Harry had been there before so he sat beside me for moral support. Not knowing Wilbert Pendel’s religious inclinations, I called the police chaplain and let him know he might be needed when we found the kid. Pendel wasn’t at his apartment or studying in the academy, though I wasn’t part of the search, Al Leighton stepping up to handle things.

I heard my name called again, this time by a chorus of reporters at the scene tape, yelling and waving me close.

“
Why did you challenge a psychopath, Detective?
”

“
Was it intentional? Were you trying to smoke someone out?
”

“
This PSIT
…
is it true there’s no rules? You can do what you want?
”

“
I hear the reason your citation was revoked is because you lied about something. Is that true?
”

Not a single question about the actual cases. I knew the questions were based on misinformation probably fed them by one of Baggs’s surrogates – Willpot, most likely – but it didn’t make the frantic queries any less inane.

“
Detective Ryder, do you think you should be suspended for inciting a killer?”

I started toward the chattering simians but felt a hand tighten on the back of my shirt. “Focus, brother,” Harry whispered. “Be pleasant and make innocuous statements.”

I took a deep breath, nailed a politician’s earnest and joyless smile to my face, and sauntered over. “I was simply explaining sociopathic killers to my academy class,” I said. “I don’t know where the idea of a challenge came from.”

“Why did you put the video on the Internet?”

“Class members put it up as an instructional video because informational videos are common on YouTube. I was surprised when I saw it, but not fearful, as the recording has no inflammatory content, only a factual discussion of sociopathy.”

“That’s not how the video has been represented.”

“Perhaps you should consider your sources.”

“But it sparked a lunatic into killing people, right?”

I put my hands in my pockets and shook my head amiably. “The current horrors could just as easily have been sparked by a story in the media.”

That hit close to home. I glanced at Harry and he nodded
good job.

A stiff-haired blonde woman from a local television station elbowed to the front of the herd, a pad in her hand. “But you did have a citation taken away, right, Detective? Chief Baggs gave you an award, then … what was the word?
Nullified
it.” She gave me a
gotcha!
grin. “So why would the Chief revoke your citation if you’re so innocent?”

I considered her question. It deserved a truthful answer.

“Because Chief Baggs is a horse’s ass,” I explained calmly as pens scribbled on paper and cameras rolled. “He’s unfit to command an ox cart, much less a police department.”

Harry moved me away from the frenetic reporters and we drove off to banging on our windows and Tom Mason calling with an update.

“Chaplain Burgess went to Pendel’s parents’ house, found the kid carrying away a sack of groceries and a six of beer. When Burgess told him the news, the kid totally freaked, punched Burgess, ran screaming back inside the house. The chappy tried to get the kid to come out, but nothing worked.”

“Pendel’s at the house now?” I asked.

“No one’s quite sure. And the father is—”

“A computer salesman on a trip to Seattle. Fastest he can get here is three hours.”

I U-turned in the street and headed to the Pendels’ home.

“What’s the kid like?” Harry asked.

“Wendy Holliday had the best description: Wilbert Pendel watches people through a weird crack in space-time. You can see him, but you can’t touch him.”

We were there minutes later, Al Leighton out front with the chaplain, two empty cruisers in the drive. I figured the uniforms were checking the area.

“He’s not in there,” Tim Burgess said. “Must have slipped out the back.”

We looked up, saw O’Herlihy walking our way, a woman in her fifties at his side, her face lined with concern. “This is Mrs Calloway,” O’Herlihy explained. “A neighbor. She says Pendel’s behind her house. In a tree.”

Mrs Calloway’s home was three doors down. The backyard was centered by a thick live oak with wide-spread branches. There was a small platform in the branches, a tree fort. Whenever my family followed my civil-engineer father to a new jobsite he rented a house as far from others as possible, usually in the country. The first thing my brother and I did was build a tree fort as a place to escape our father’s consuming and irrational anger.

This fort was a dozen feet up, an eight-by-four flat of plywood forming the floor. Three-foot slatted deck rails made the perimeter, a small opening on one side to allow entry.

Pendel was crouching inside, dressed in a police uniform. There were any number of places he could have gotten it using his recruit ID. He peered warily through the railing slats. He had a gun in his hand, a large-frame revolver of some sort. I waved everyone away except Harry. We inched closer until Pendel started spitting toward us, about ten paces out with enough angle to see inside.

“Where’d you get the gun, Will?” I asked.

As if all was forgiven, the spitting turned to a Jack-o’-lantern grin. “Bought it last week, Detective Ryder. I needed me a throw-down.”

A throw-down was an untraceable weapon cops supposedly planted as false evidence. They existed more in the realm of stories than in real life. Pendel had probably soaked up the term from cop shows.

“How about I go call for a beaner?” Harry whispered, meaning a riot gun loaded with beanbag ammo.

I nodded, seeing where he was heading. He slowly backpedaled away.

“That’s not an official gun, Will,” I said, surreptitiously thumbing the magazine from my nine. “How about you take mine? I’ll climb up and we’ll trade.”

“I like mine. I carved my name into the grip.”

He showed me the scrawled grip. He frowned at something in his head, then slid the weapon’s muzzle into his mouth.

“WILL!” I yelled. He didn’t seem to hear, sliding the muzzle across his tongue as if fascinated by the feeling. After a few seconds he removed it.

“Your father’s coming, Will. He needs you to be with him. He needs your help.”

Pendel looked at me as if I were speaking Mandarin. “I’m an orphan,” he said. “My mother and father threw me away.”

The gun barrel found its way back into his mouth. I had no idea of Pendel’s history or his relationship to his parents. The only person I’d ever seen him interact with was Wendy Holliday, and that held semi-veiled lust and a clumsy arrogance born of insecurity. I called her, spoke thirty seconds in a whisper, and returned my attention to Pendel.

“You hungry, Wilbert?” I said. “I could order up a pizza. Burgers. Whatever.”

“No thanks, Detective Ryder. I think I’ll just stay up here and eat my gun.” He laughed, an eerie, quivering sound. Eating your gun was cop speak for committing suicide with a pistol in your mouth. Pendel would have heard it at the academy, probably as a dark joke. “
If I don’t get at least a B on that exam tomorrow I’m gonna have to eat my gun.
”

Pendel looked like he had no idea what life meant any more, the last look I’d seen on every suicide I’d not prevented. He moved the gun close to his eyes, studied it, spun the chamber. He ran the snout over his cheek and put the muzzle back in his mouth. One touch of the trigger and he’d be gone.

I clapped my hands together hard. “Hey!” I yelled. “I got an idea. How about a few brews, Wilbert? Something cold to go with that gun.”

This was at-the-edge stuff, but the barrel slid from between his teeth and his eyes brightened. “Fuck yeah, Detective. Some brews and some Jägermeister.”

“I dunno about the Jägermeister, Will,” I said. I wanted camaraderie, not a boozefest in the searing summer heat.

He frowned and got interested in the gun again.

“Jägermeister for everyone!” I yelled, doing a dance in the grass, anything to get his attention.

“Rock on, Detective,” he laughed. I delivered our drink order to Tom Mason, watching through binoculars from the street.

“You think that’s a good idea?” he asked. “Alcohol?”

“It’s all I got, Tom. But Harry and I are working on something.”

“I’ll send a cruiser for the drinks.”

“Hurry,” I said. “He’s slipping fast. Anything on the father?”

“In the air, but at least two hours away.”

I diddled around under the tree, playing the fool and trying to keep Pendel engaged enough to forget about the gun in his hand. I was soaked in sweat from nerves and ninety-five-degree heat. At least Pendel was in the blue shade of the wide oak. Four minutes later I heard the air-sucking swoosh of big engines and watched two cruisers pull onto the lawn, probably the first time a bottle of Jäg and two sixes of Bud ever had a police escort.

“Here comes the party, Will,” I said, motioning the uniformed cop to advance slowly with the bag. I held high a six-pack and the bottle of Jägermeister.

“How about I climb up and we’ll pop a few?”

“Ain’t room enough for two up here,” he said through the bars. “Throw me up a six and the Jäg.”

He stood to grab the bottle and cans, crouched again. I watched him suck down a third of the herbal liqueur, wondering if this had been a good idea. I saw the headline:
Killer-inciting Cop Gets Suicidal Recruit Drunk.

Pendel chased the Jäg with a whole can of beer. He picked up the bottle again.

“Easy there, bud,” I said. “Save some for me.”

His face became a snarl. “Get your own fuckin’ bottle, asshole.”

Mood swings. Bad going to worse. The gun went to his cheek again. He closed his eyes and rubbed it over his forehead.

A voice behind me called out a cheery, “Will!”

I spun to see Wendy walking my way, carefree, wearing white shorts and a cobalt blouse, running shoes. Crouched beside the house Al Leighton was holding a bullhorn and the Kevlar vest Wendy was supposed to be wearing.

Pendel moved the gun aside and stared at Holliday. “Why are you here?” he snarled. “You hate me. You think I’m gross and stupid.”

I was watching Pendel’s gun hand. So was the police sharpshooter in a window in the second floor of the house next door. My worst horror was Pendel going into shooting mode. At this distance the sniper, Cal Mallory, could pretty much take the kid apart. But I’d been in this land before, and was eighty per cent certain the kid was only a threat to himself.

I stepped to the side, figuring Pendel couldn’t handle more than one person at a time. A dark stain appeared on Pendel’s pants. He had urinated without knowing it, another bad sign. He seemed to disappear inside himself again, came back with an angry face.

“You’re fucking Ryder, aren’t you, Wendy?”