The Killing Game (35 page)

He tucked it under an arm and closed the lid. The kitten mewed softly inside the wire mesh. Gregory caught the cats, Ema took them to the animal shelter, just as her friend had suggested. It was the one area where he and Ema had made something intelligent and efficient function between them.

He knocked her door but got no response. Rang the bell, nothing. He put his ear to the door and heard the television.

“…
today’s episode of
True-life Crime
presents a made-for-TV adaptation of the bestselling story, ‘I Married a
…’”

Cops and cooking and shopping. Ema and her damn programs. He pulled out his key and let himself inside.

“
… next week we’ll be presenting another true-crime adaptation for fans of
…”

“Ema?” he called.

No sign of her in the living room, though several magazines were on the coffee table, opened to various ads.

“Ema? Are you here?”

Still carrying the trap, Gregory went to the dining room. Not there. Kitchen. No Ema. He heard what sounded like a muted scream and froze.

What the hell was that? Something on the television?

“
… don’t forget to watch the best information team on the coast, award-winning news and weather from
…”

The television echoing through the house, Gregory tiptoed to the bathroom, an inch of light between door and frame. He nudged the door with his elbow and it swung soundlessly open…

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” Gregory screamed, staring at the cat in Ema’s hands, black with white paws, its belly slit wide. The animal’s mouth opened and a hideous gurgling squeal came out.

Dragna Negrescu dropped the cat into the sink. Her hand scrabbled to her bodice and pulled the shining pendant from between her breasts. “
Mănâncă mamaliga dvs, Grigor!
” Negrescu stepped to Gregory with the pendant held high. “
Pot¸i să-l miros?
”

Eat your mamaliga, Grigor. Can you smell it?

“WHAT are…” Gregory’s voice stopped. Only his lips moved.

“Grigor,” Negrescu said. “
Mirosul mamaliga
.”

Smell the mamaliga.

The smell of the dish filled Gregory’s mind. The cat trap fell from limp fingers and opened, the kitten dashing away. He stared past the woman, past the wall, past the house. All he could do was stare.

Negrescu calmly studied Gregory as she washed blood from her hands, seeing dilated pupils and recalling his fast and sometimes incoherent speech at their last meal. Some kind of drug, probably inevitable. She sighed: this part of her journey was ending.

Last year she’d realized money would become an issue: live well and burn through the inheritance in a few years, or keep the money in stable investments supplemented with mindless labor, or…

Get more money.

“Come into the living room, Grigor,” Negrescu said, drying her hands on a towel. “It’s time we talked seriously. It’s been too long.”

Walking as mechanically as a robot, Gregory followed Negrescu into her pink-hued living room. She sat on the white frilly couch and patted the space beside her. Gregory sat. Dragna Negrescu smiled at Grigor with a beatific face found in a
Cooking Light
article:
How to Make Heavenly Pie Crusts.
She reached behind her neck and unbuttoned the pendant.

“
Ce este lumina, Grigor?
” she said, the orb of light rolling between her fingers. “What is the light?”

“Uh…”

“
Cred, Grigor. Ce este lumina?
Think … what is the light?”

“
Esti lumina, Ema.
You are the light. My light.”

“Good boy. You’ve been in my house, haven’t you? Ema’s house. Go ahead, Grigor, talk.”

“
Da, Ema,
” he said, staring straight ahead. “I was looking for your records. Your money.”

Negrescu leaned against Gregory and stroked a strand of hair from his forehead. “What a good boy you are, Grigor. Such fine and useful instincts. What happened next?”

He paused, his mind ticking through events like a clock. “I killed Harriet Ralway. Her filthy, lying daughter said terrible things to me.”

“You’re going to kill Ema next, Gregory? Is that the plan?”

Gregory frowned. “When it’s time.”

Negrescu smiled. “You’ll not kill Ema yet, Grigor. You have unfinished business with the police. Remember how they humiliated you with everyone watching? Made the
rahat
pour down your legs? Laughed as they stole your manhood?”

Gregory’s eyes stared through Ema, through the wall behind her, through the walls of the house. “The police laughed, Ema. Everyone laughed at me.”

“What happened next?”

“The big policeman pulled a stick. He w-waved it at me and, uh…”

“Look in your head, Grigor. What happened next?”

Gregory’s eyes tightened in anger. “He hit me with the stick. He insulted me.”

“Good. What happened next?”

“They … um, he, uh, I don’t remem—”

Negrescu’s hand lashed out and slapped Gregory’s face, sounding like a gunshot. “We’ve been through this a hundred times, Grigor. I put it in your mind: Look at it and get angry. What happened next?”

“People called me a freak,” Gregory hissed through clenched teeth. “A pervert. Shit boy. The police threw me to the ground. They insulted me.”

“They told you to go home and learn how to use a toilet, didn’t they?” Dragna Negrescu said. “Just like all those years ago. When you’d poop yourself when you ate too much on special nights.”

“Yes.”

“Their insults made you angry enough to kill, didn’t they? To regain your honor.”

“Yes.
Yes!
”

“It’s been such fun, Grigor, seeing my … our work on the television, in the papers. We can keep going. Would you like that?”

Gregory slitted his eyes and made a buzzing sound with his lips. Negrescu stared at him, then stood. She put her hands on her hips and studied herself in the mirror, pleased with its report. She returned to Gregory and slipped her fingers through his hair, leaning until her teeth were at his ear.

“Do you know who I am, Grigor?” she whispered. “Can you see beneath my mask?”

“Ema.”

“Ema? Not Dragna Negrescu, the records clerk from so long ago … the woman who rode you across the sea and into her dream?”

“You’re Ema,” Gregory said. “My Ema.”

Negrescu licked Gregory’s ear, her whisper growing husky. “There never was an Ema, my sweet little project. I made her from a few pieces of paper. Popescu showed me how to present her to you.”

“Popescu,” Gregory repeated. It was a word he thought he should know, but it seemed far away, on the other side of a towering rock wall. Ema planted a kiss on Gregory’s head and the pendant flashed once again, followed by a few words in Romanian.

“I’m getting scared this guy is on a mission,” Harry said, looking at his watch. There’d been no sign of Nieves. I considered the man’s prowess and combined it with our feeling that he was falling apart.

“Let’s go public, bro. BOLO on every form of media we can find. Contact every reporter within three hundred miles. Say he’s wanted in conjunction with the recent killings. That’ll get attention.”

Gregory stood from the couch. He walked to the mirror and straightened his collar, patted down his hair. It had gotten mussed.

“I really have to be going, Ema,” he snapped. “I have much to do.” His face was sore on the left side, probably from all the faces he’d been making for his sister. His head felt odd and strangely disconnected, like pieces of dreams were floating through his skull. He wasn’t even quite sure why he’d come to his sister’s house. Or why her face kept flashing pieces of another face, scary but somehow familiar. All he really knew was something in the back of his mind told him to leave her house.

“Breakfast tomorrow?” Ema said, rising. “I’d love to hear about your volunteer program.”

Gregory grimaced. He wanted to wash his hands but Ema’s bathroom was a misery, all that light, the smells. It was like an operating room in there. “Maybe next week,” he said. “I’ll call you.”

Ema brushed a speck of lint from his shoulder. “You never call, dear. I’ll call you.”

Gregory numbly endured another hug and left, closing the front door behind him, the trap in his hand. Within a few steps heard the television resume its former level …
nothing beats the great taste of Swanson Family Dinners. Be sure to pick up
…
We interrupt this program to bring you a special update
…

Gregory was backing down the drive when the door opened, Ema waving a handkerchief. “Yoo-hoo! Gregory!”

He cursed to himself, jammed on the brakes, rolled down the window.

“What is it now, Ema?”

“Can I see you for a moment, dear?”

We found out where Nieves’s sister lived, but in a very bad way. The call came to 911 and we were at the house in minutes, siren blasting, engine pushed to its limits.

Cops swarmed the place. The sister, Ema Nieves, was on the couch, a frayed bundle of tears and terror. Nieves was on the floor in the hall, a 380 caliber bullet just to the left of his heart. His hand was clutching a boning knife, a wicked instrument. The front of his shirt was a river of scarlet. He was on his back and staring at the ceiling.

I took the poor woman’s hand and moved her from the living room to the kitchen, helping her into a chair. I debated whether or not to question her at this sensitive time; a hospital might have been best, tranquilizers. But I needed to hear what had happened.

“Can you talk, Ms Nieves?” I asked.

Her eyes were closed tight. Tears had washed make-up down her cheeks. “I-I’ll try.”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

“H-hh-he … I couldn’t…’’

“It’s over, ma’am,” I consoled her, taking her hand in mine. “You’re safe and that’s a very good thing. Can you explain what happened?”

“G-Gregory tried to kill me,” she sobbed, shaking her head. “H-he’s my b-b-brother and he, he…”

Harry had brought a glass of water. Ms Nieves drank and it seemed to help her get steady. She wiped her eyes, handed the glass back, whispered, “Thank you.”

“Take your time, Ms Nieves,” I consoled. “I understand that it’s tough.”

Ema Nieves took a deep breath. She paused and closed her eyes as if looking for something inside her, strength perhaps.

“G-Gregory came by without calling. It was strange because he always calls. I was in the bathroom and heard a terrible banging on the front door. It scared me so I tiptoed into the living room. The next thing I knew he pushed through into the house. H-he had crazy eyes, like I’ve never seen before. He said I’d betrayed him, that he was going to cut my throat. He had a knife.”

“Did he say why he wanted to kill you?”

She looked at me, hands shaking, her face a mask of confusion. “H-he kept accusing me of being a spy for the police. I didn’t know what he was talking about. It was so crazy. He started to come toward me, waving the knife, getting louder.”

I looked at Harry. Paranoia. Part of Gregory Nieves’s dissolution, I figured.

“Has your brother been acting strange lately?” I asked quietly.

She stared. “How did you know?”

“You were with him when he tripped a waiter some days back?”

Another
how-did-you-know?
look. “H-he told me the waiter somehow had it in for him. It was terribly strange and embarrassing.”

I looked toward Nieves’s sprawled and lifeless body and saw the dark revolver on the floor a dozen feet from his body. A photographer was crouched above the gun, flashing off shots.

“That’s your gun, Ms Nieves … Ema?”

She glanced at the weapon, head snapping away as though the image was too ugly to bear. “I l-live alone, and it made sense. I b-bought it this spring. Took lessons. I wanted to make sure I was doing everything right. Wh-when I heard the pounding on the door I … I took the gun into the living room and I, and I—”

Her wall of courage fell apart and she collapsed into my arms, crying as if everything in her life had dissolved into dust.

“I know it doesn’t sound like it, Ms Nieves,” I whispered, gently patting her shaking back. “But you’re a very lucky woman.”

Two weeks passed. It was a Saturday and the recruits had graduated in the afternoon. It had been a splendid sunlit ceremony, with flags and gunshot salutes and an eloquent speech about tradition. A pity the speech had come from Baggs, who wrote little of it and understood less. Our dual
mea culpa
media moment was one week past. There’d been a news blitz for a couple days, then a guy in Orange Beach got bit by a shark and everyone forgot about cop stuff.

I had a small party at my place. Harry was among the crowd, of course, with Sally Hargreaves. Director of Forensics Wayne Hembree attended with his wife. Rein Earley was there, taking bows for a fine and funny speech about her days at the academy. A patrol officer for a year now, Rein was Harry’s niece, though few knew it. Doc Kavanaugh floated in, as wizardy as always. I’d invited Clair, not really expecting her to attend, but she arrived with a date, a fortyish cardiologist who was so good looking I figured he had to be gay or have issues or both.

Wendy was there, naturally. I hadn’t seen much of her the last few days, what with cramming for the exams. She aced everything, by the way. I wish I could have invited the entire recruit class as thanks for rebuilding the video and its second life. But I’d offered some gratitude last week by taking everyone to a dinner I’d be paying down for months.

I was leaning against the rail and sipping a Sazerac. I turned my cell phone off, since everyone I wanted to talk to was at my house. Dropping it back into the pocket of my jacket, I felt a piece of paper. It was the message Roy McDermott had left on my office phone,
The snook are calling.

I’d paid it no heed at the time, too much going on. But now it called up a conversation from a year ago, Roy and I flyfishing for snook at the Ding Darling Nature Preserve on Florida’s Sanibel Island, the outflowing tide pulling the elusive, aerodynamic sportfishes though the brushy passes as the setting sun turned the twilight air to gold. A light breeze rattled the leaves of the palmettos. The early stars were winking down.