Murder Games Read online

  Still, what were the odds? A building super who was going to law school at night. How much he enjoyed telling us that, too. Almost as much as Elizabeth enjoyed telling him that he should probably ask for his tuition money back.

  There was only one thing we needed to get him to open the door of apartment 2402, and she practically had it pressed against his nose. Her badge.

  “Besides, we’re not trying to arrest Dr. Bensen, we’re trying to protect her,” Elizabeth added. “Now, open the goddamn door.”

  So much for our tough-talking soon-to-be law-school graduate. The super dug into the pocket of his fluffy blue bathrobe and began fumbling with an overcrowded key chain. Bensen’s swanky high-rise building only looked like a hotel. There was no master key.

  “Shit!” Elizabeth suddenly shouted. “Move!”

  She’d heard the same loud crashing noise behind the door that we all did.

  The super, slow with the keys, was even slower to move. Elizabeth promptly shoved him to the ground. She reached for her Glock, took one step back, and raised her foot, all in one smooth motion.

  You want to break down a door? There’s only one way to do it. Never with your shoulder. Never with a running start. You need to kick and kick hard, landing your heel a few inches to the left of the lock. Anywhere else and you might as well be kicking a concrete wall.

  All that said, you still only have a coin flip of a chance.

  “Do you plan on just watching?” asked Elizabeth after her first attempt failed.

  “I thought women kicking down doors was like men asking for directions,” I said, sidling up next to her. “Count of one, okay?”

  “One,” said Elizabeth.

  Our technique hovered somewhere between Chuck Norris and the Rockettes, but the timing was spot-on, our heels landing simultaneously to the left of the lock. The wood splintered, and the door flew open. Instinctively I peeled off as Elizabeth crouched behind her Glock, shrinking herself as a target. She’d been trained well.

  “Stay here,” she said.

  “No problem,” I replied. She had a gun; I didn’t.

  Tell that to the super, though, who thought he could fall right in line behind her. Have you never seen a single cop show, buddy?

  I grabbed him, yanking him out of the doorway. For the second time in less than a minute the guy was getting shoved to the ground. We were doing wonders for his self-esteem. At least he wasn’t about to die stupid.

  I waited as Elizabeth checked the apartment.

  How do you gauge what someone means to you? Have her walk into danger when there’s little you can do about it. Scary how much I could care about a person I’d only known for a short while. Actually, it wasn’t scary at all. It was all too human.

  “Clear,” she finally said.

  Although the way Elizabeth said it suggested there was a little more to it. That is, I was clear to come in, but there was still something to see. Something not good.

  It’s amazing how much one little word can tell you.

  Chapter 81

  “CLEAR.”

  How fitting…

  I walked into Dr. Bensen’s apartment through the foyer and into the living room, stepping over the shattered glass remains of what had surely been a vase. The flowers lumped on the marble floor amid the shards removed any possible doubt.

  The flowers were also dead, I noticed.

  “In here,” Elizabeth called out.

  I followed her voice down a short hallway to see her standing in front of an open bedroom door, culprit in hand. Actually, cradled in her arms was more like it. Dr. Bensen’s cat was of course a Bombay. What other color but black could it have been?

  We’d pounded on the door, and the cat freaked, ultimately knocking over the vase. That explained the crashing sound. It wasn’t the Dealer. But even before Elizabeth turned and led me into the bedroom, I knew he’d been there. I could feel it. Days ago I would’ve laughed at the idea of being able to feel someone’s presence. I would’ve made fun of myself, the full-on ridicule…professor with a PhD in psychology trips on a crystal ball and hits his head on a Ouija board.

  Elizabeth put down the cat, saying nothing as we approached the bed. There was no blood, no gore to test the stomach and nerves. Yet that somehow made it even more chilling.

  Dr. Amy Bensen was topless and tied up, but there was nothing sexual about it. There was also nothing to figure out in terms of how he killed her. One paddle under the right clavicle, the other paddle on the left rib cage.

  Clear.

  He shocked her over and over, jolt after jolt. So much so that the outlines of the paddles were practically singed on her chest, the skin crinkled and horribly warped. Portable defibrillators don’t gyp you on the juice.

  “How long?” I asked. “How long has she been dead? A couple of days?”

  “At least,” said Elizabeth. “Maybe more.”

  No wonder the cat was a bit panicky. It was starving. I quickly went to the kitchen and found its food in a cupboard next to the stove. I filled the water bowl, too.

  “You would think someone would’ve noticed a missing doctor,” I said, returning to the bedroom.

  “Unless she was off for the weekend,” said Elizabeth. “Also, she lived alone…no men’s clothes in the closets, no wedding ring.”

  I hadn’t noticed about the ring. I’d been too busy noticing what else she was missing.

  Chapter 82

  “THERE’S NO card,” I said.

  Elizabeth shook her head. “No. Not unless it’s somewhere underneath her.”

  I knew the protocol. It was a crime scene. We weren’t supposed to touch the body. Tempting as it was, we’d know soon enough.

  “Did you call it in?” I asked.

  She reached for her cell. “About to.”

  Twenty minutes later, Dr. Amy Bensen’s apartment was only a few people short of what the fire marshal would have called maximum occupancy. Save for Elizabeth, it was all guys. As I sat off to the side in a corner of the bedroom, on a tufted chaise longue that was circa last-century Laura Ashley, I entertained myself by watching most of them steal furtive glances at Elizabeth as she chatted up a fellow detective. They all treated her like one of the boys, but make no mistake, they all wanted her like the prom queen.

  All total, it took another hour for Dr. Bensen to be photographed, poked, prodded, and swabbed for evidence. When she was finally cleared to be moved, there was no playing card anywhere underneath her.

  Why not? Why didn’t you leave a card this time?

  There was no way he was done killing. There was also something about the timing. Bensen’s file had been pulled from its storage box and was sitting right on top. We couldn’t miss it. Yet it was as if the Dealer knew that Bensen’s body wouldn’t be discovered right away. More than knew, in fact. It’s what he wanted. It’s the way he planned it.

  I bolted up from the edge of the chaise, finding Elizabeth in the living room. She was off in the corner in an armchair, reading over her notes as the first responder. Her report would come later.

  Later than she imagined.

  “Judge Kingsman,” I said.

  “What about him?” she asked.

  “We need to get back to his house,” I said. “Right away.”

  Elizabeth didn’t budge from her chair. She didn’t even flinch. “It’s four in the morning, Dylan,” she said. “Are you saying he’s the next victim? Because we’ll call him and then—”

  “No. We can’t call him,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Because there’s only a chance that he’s the next victim.”

  There’s no hiding fatigue at four o’clock in the morning. “For Christ’s sake,” snapped Elizabeth. “What are you talking about?”

  I sat down in the other armchair, leaning forward. Only she could hear me. “There are two possibilities,” I said. “The first is that Judge Kingsman is about to be killed.”

  “What’s the second?”

  I told he
r.

  She didn’t ask if I was sure. She didn’t even ask me to explain. Elizabeth didn’t say anything to me, in fact.

  Instead she reached for her phone, dialing the dispatcher at the Fiftieth Precinct. She wanted a detail outside Kingsman’s house, front and back. We were more than half an hour away, but the detail would take only ten minutes to get there, tops.

  “No one goes in,” Elizabeth said to the dispatcher. “And no one goes out.”

  Two possibilities.

  Judge Arthur Kingsman was either a dead man or the Dealer.

  Chapter 83

  IT FELT like one of those sci-fi movies in which everyone else on the planet suddenly and mysteriously disappears.

  We turned the corner near Kingsman’s house, in Riverdale’s Hudson Hill, the first hint of sunrise casting a yellowish glow over the entire street. Elizabeth had been keeping her hands warm in the pockets of my jacket during the ride, but she now took one out to tap my shoulder and point at my headlamp. She wanted me to cut the light.

  Up ahead were the silhouettes of two cars parked at the bottom of Kingsman’s driveway.

  I knew what she was thinking underneath her helmet; she didn’t have to say it. Why are there two cars?

  There should’ve been only one in front. The other should’ve been on the street behind the house, covering the back.

  Moreover, why were the cars parked directly in front of the house? Too conspicuous. They should’ve been on the edge of the property or down the street a bit. All they needed was a decent view, not a front-row seat.

  I cut the engine, waiting for Elizabeth to step off. It was hardly a wait. She was already swinging a leg before we even came to a stop.

  Sure, it was the graveyard shift, but did it have to be a rookie detail? With a huff, Elizabeth removed her helmet and practically shoved it in my hands. Some greenies were about to get an earful.

  No, they weren’t. Elizabeth stopped ten feet from the first car. I caught up to her, and we were both looking at the same thing. An empty Honda Accord, lights off but the engine still running. Stranger still was that the front door on the driver’s side was slightly open.

  I was about to ask if the NYPD counted Hondas in their unmarked fleet. Apparently they didn’t, because before I could ask, Elizabeth had drawn her Glock.

  There was no doubt about the car behind the Accord, though. It was the same kind of sedan as Elizabeth drove. It was empty, too. The engine was off, all the doors closed.

  “Tell me you carry a bug,” I said.

  That was a b-u-g, as in “back-up gun.” My not having a weapon outside Dr. Bensen’s apartment was one thing. This was another. Something was up, and we were as out in the open as it gets.

  Elizabeth reached down to her right pant leg and removed the Glock version of a pocket pistol, the G42, from her shin holster.

  “Don’t make me regret this,” she whispered, handing it to me. She was only half joking.

  “Don’t worry. I’ve only shot one other partner in the back,” I whispered in return. I motioned with my hand. “After you.”

  The look on her face was almost as priceless as her slight hesitation. The irony, of course, was that there was no chivalry in this situation. I was technically a civilian, and she wasn’t. There was no way she was going to let me lead.

  But I had her back.

  We walked up the driveway, the grumble of that Honda engine fading behind us. Every window in Kingsman’s house was dark. There was no sign of anyone, inside or out. Maybe there were some early birds chirping, but all I could hear was the sound of my own heartbeat—that and the words of my first handler, a Frenchman, with whom I was stationed in London. It was his version of “Keep calm and don’t panic.” “Le secret pour rester en vie? Ne jamais cesser de respirer.”

  The secret to staying alive? Never stop breathing.

  “This way,” said Elizabeth.

  Without discussion, she and I both knew where we were heading. The back of the property. The front was a little too quiet for our liking. Way too quiet. My kingdom for some noise.

  Elizabeth heard it first. We were halfway along the side of the house. Going on nothing but instinct, she plastered herself against the stucco of Kingsman’s Tudor, her arm pulling me next to her. She pointed to her ears.

  That’s when I heard it, too. Dim but definitely there.

  Voices. As in plural. It was at least two men talking. It might have been the patrolmen, but that wouldn’t explain the Honda with the engine running. We needed to get closer to hear them better. Better yet, we needed to get a look.

  Slowly we edged along the side of the house, the corner toward the back no more than ten feet away. We were as quiet as falling leaves.

  So was the guy behind us.

  Chapter 84

  I ALMOST shot his head off. I mean, seriously, who clears his throat before yelling, “Freeze!”

  A rookie, that’s who.

  I spun around so fast that the kid nearly tripped over his own feet. Luckily for him, I saw the uniform. All he saw were our street clothes and our guns. God knows what would’ve happened if Elizabeth hadn’t been so swift with her badge.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” she screamed.

  That brought another officer running over from the back of the house, in full sprint. With his buzz cut, he looked even younger than his partner. We were now the meat in a neophyte sandwich.

  Quickly Elizabeth explained who we were and why we were there. The only reason they were there was because of her.

  Their turn. Why the Honda out front? Why were they out of their cars and on the property?

  “Follow me,” said the buzz cut.

  We followed him to a patio off the back of the house, where two more officers were standing—hovering, really—over another man sitting in one of four wrought-iron chairs, all of which probably had cushions on them a few months ago, during the summer. Or maybe not. The chairs and the patio itself had that overly neglected look. There were cracked bricks everywhere underfoot, along with a few spots that were missing bricks altogether. Judge Kingsman didn’t strike me as a relax-on-the-patio sort of guy. Maybe his wife had been when she was alive.

  Elizabeth and I both stared at the guy in the chair. He looked around my age, midthirties, with jet-black hair parted neatly to the side above a pair of black-frame glasses that were either hip or nerdy, depending on which borough you live in.

  Intentionally or not, he was sitting dead center under a lone floodlight. He wasn’t in handcuffs, but his body language was unmistakable. He wasn’t there by choice.

  “Who is he?” asked Elizabeth.

  “No wallet or any ID on him, but he says his name is Elijah Timitz,” said the buzz cut. He motioned to the guy. “Go ahead, tell them what you told me.”

  Dead silence. The guy simply sat there, staring back at us. There was no fear, but it wasn’t cocky, either.

  The buzz cut rolled his eyes. Okay, pal, I’ll tell ’em…

  “He says he works for the judge and was dropping off some files,” he began. I could read his nameplate now, courtesy of the floodlight. The buzz cut was Officer J. Glausen. “He claims it’s research for cases, and he led us to the back here to show us where he drops them off.”

  In unison, Elizabeth and I looked over at one of the other officers and the files tucked under his arm. Behind him was a footlocker-type box by the door to the house.

  “Is it?” asked Elizabeth. “Research?” She didn’t even bother asking Timitz directly.

  “It’s a bunch of notes and legal language,” answered Glausen. “So maybe, yeah, it is. That’s not the problem, though.”

  I got it before he said it. The problem was math. Everyone was armed, but there was still one gun too many. In other words, everyone was armed. Timitz had been carrying. The gun in Glausen’s hand was in addition to the one in his holster.

  “Do you have a license for that?” asked Elizabeth. Now she was talking directly to Timitz. He still wasn’t answering. “
Do you have a license to carry a firearm?” she repeated.

  Finally, he spoke. Sort of. “I want my attorney present,” he said.

  Glausen snickered. “Do you know who asks for their lawyers? Guilty people,” he said.

  “Or maybe people who have an understanding of the justice system and how it works and sometimes doesn’t work,” I chimed in. “Perhaps someone who works for a judge?”

  Elizabeth looked at me. She knew what I was doing. You catch more flies with honey.

  Glausen, meanwhile, had no clue. Neither did any of the other officers, who had been standing around like mannequins.

  “Yeah, and while we’re at it, where is the judge?” asked Elizabeth. “Where’s Kingsman?”

  Glausen had no clue about that, either.

  “Good question,” he said. Cue the sarcasm. “Maybe the guy who works for him knows.”

  Chapter 85

  “DID YOU call the home number?” asked Elizabeth. “The landline?”

  “Yeah, we did that, too,” said Glausen. “Twice.”

  They had knocked, they had banged, they had rung the doorbell repeatedly and checked all the doors of Kingsman’s house to see if any of them was open. None was.

  Elizabeth took off her jacket and began wrapping the sleeve around her fist. “Let’s find the cheapest window to replace,” she said.

  “Or you could just use the key.”

  We all turned to Timitz.

  “What?” asked Elizabeth.

  “Judge Kingsman keeps a spare key underneath the middle flowerpot by the back door here,” said Timitz, pointing.

  “How do you know that?” asked Glausen.

  But that was the wrong question. Why are you telling us? That was the right one. Timitz was admitting he had access to Kingsman’s house.

  Glausen tried again. “How do you know there’s a key?”

  “I want my attorney present,” answered Timitz. That figured.