Murder Games Read online

  “Fancy meeting you here,” I said, taking a seat.

  Of course, the charm of Jojo’s, on Chapel Street, is that there’s nothing fancy about it. Wooden tables and chairs on a scuffed-up wood floor were scattered about, and some grandma-style curtains were hanging in the windows. Very college.

  “How was the rest of class?” she asked. Her flashing of a wry smile would’ve been redundant.

  “A third of the students wanted me to chase after you while another third actually thought you were a plant—you know, someone I hired. The course is about abnormal behavior, after all.”

  “And the remaining third?” she asked.

  “Too busy wondering what grade they’ll get if someone does indeed kill me before the term is over,” I said.

  I waited for her to tell me that she’d been a tad melodramatic; that no one really wanted to kill me. Instead she opened the folder directly in front her. It was green.

  “Let’s back up a bit,” she said.

  She reintroduced herself. Elizabeth Needham, NYPD detective second grade. I could call her Elizabeth, though.

  Then she basically introduced me to myself.

  I sat there listening as she quickly reduced my life to a series of bullet points, reading in a near monotone off a hand-scribbled piece of paper in the folder. At least it wasn’t a cocktail napkin.

  “Dr. Dylan Reinhart…Yale undergrad…PhD in psychology, also Yale…three-year research fellowship, University of Cambridge…then another PhD, this time from MIT, in statistics with a focus on Bayesian inference.” She paused and looked up. “Am I supposed to know what that is? Bayesian inference?”

  Maybe if you’re dating Nate Silver…

  “Bayesian inference is why most women shouldn’t have routine mammograms until they’re fifty,” I said.

  “And why’s that?”

  I nodded at the folder. “You’re the one who apparently likes to do her research, Elizabeth.”

  “This bothers you, doesn’t it?” she asked. “My looking into your background?”

  “No. What bothers me is that you still haven’t explained who wants to kill me. Anytime you’re ready.”

  She closed the folder, resting her hands on top of it. No wedding ring. No jewelry of any kind. “Do you know who Allen Grimes is?”

  “Grimes on Crimes?” The guy wrote a daily column for the New York Gazette. I’d heard about it—catchy name and all—but never read it.

  Elizabeth nodded. “That’s him,” she said. “Two days ago, Grimes received an anonymous package in the mail. Inside it was your book.”

  “Is that a crime?” I asked.

  I was half joking. Not Elizabeth, though.

  “As it turns out, it was a crime,” she said.

  Chapter 4

  ELIZABETH REACHED to her left, pulling another folder in front of her. This one was red. Red’s never good.

  “Your book came with a bookmark,” she said.

  She opened the folder and removed a small evidence bag. It was sealed, labeled, and just big enough for a ham sandwich. That made it the ideal size for what it was actually holding.

  I leaned in, staring at it. “A playing card?”

  It wasn’t a question; that was clearly what it was. A playing card. The king of clubs.

  “Does this mean anything to you?” she asked.

  “That’s silly. Why would it?”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” said Elizabeth, rolling her eyes. “Clearly the reason I drove all the way out here from Manhattan is so I could ask you silly and irrelevant questions.”

  “You get the word feisty a lot, don’t you?” I asked.

  “I prefer spirited,” she said. “What do you prefer instead of smug?”

  “Actually, I’m okay with smug.”

  To her credit, she kept the straight face a good five seconds before she smiled. Peace begins with a smile, said Mother Teresa.

  “No, the card doesn’t register anything with me,” I said. “Of course, it is pretty common for people to use playing cards as bookmarks.”

  “Agreed,” she said. “Here’s something not so common, though. In fact, it’s pretty damn rare.”

  Elizabeth turned the bag around so I could see the back of the card. There was a dark red blotch on what was a harlequin-patterned blue-and-white background. It was blood.

  “I assume you’ve already had it tested,” I said.

  “It’s type AB negative,” she said. “Only around 1 percent of the population has it.”

  “Yeah, I’d say that’s rare, all right. I’d also say it was on purpose.”

  “You and me both,” she said with a nod. “Blood type as bread crumbs.”

  “So where did it lead you?” I asked.

  Chapter 5

  ELIZABETH REACHED for her red folder again and took out an eight-by-ten photo, black and white. As crime scenes go, this one was particularly grisly. Even the most devout Wes Craven fan would’ve flinched.

  “The victim’s name is Jared Louden, ran a large hedge fund,” she said. “He was stabbed to death—to put it mildly—six days ago in the entryway of his Upper East Side town house. No witnesses, no leads. Nothing.”

  I stared at the image of Louden in a pool of his own blood, his dapper-looking suit shredded from seemingly endless entry wounds. Absolutely brutal. “How many days ago did you say?”

  “Six,” she answered, “and since then there hasn’t been another murder victim with AB negative blood in a two-hundred-mile radius.”

  “What about before this guy?” I asked. “Any other unsolved cases?”

  “There’s one from more than eight months ago. A prostitute shot to death in Queens.” Elizabeth nodded at the back of the playing card. “This blood’s not eight months old. The lab put it at no more than a week.”

  “You said the card, along with my book, was mailed, right? It wasn’t delivered by messenger?”

  “Yes, definitely mailed. Routed through Farley.”

  She assumed I knew that was the main post office in Manhattan, the James A. Farley building, a.k.a. the one with the famous inscription. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.

  “The address wasn’t handwritten, was it?” I asked, speaking of inscriptions. I figured there was no chance.

  “Actually, it was,” she said. “But it was Toys‘R’Us.”

  That reference I didn’t know. “Toys‘R’Us? As in the toy store?”

  “As in writing with your nondominant hand so it’s childlike,” she explained. “That’s what we call it, at least. Nearly impossible to trace.”

  “And the card itself: what was it again?”

  Elizabeth spun the evidence bag around again to show me.

  “The king of clubs,” she said. “My first thought was a God complex. The killer thinks of himself as a king.”

  “Does that make me his subject?”

  “He obviously identifies with you or your book in some way. But whether he loathes you or reveres you, the chances are pretty good that he wants to kill you.”

  “I’m sure it’s a possibility, but that’s a pretty big leap,” I said.

  “A big leap, huh?”

  “Sure. Fixation disorders play out in many ways.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “Then again…” Her voice trailed off.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. What haven’t you shown me?

  Elizabeth picked up the book, turning it around so I could see my author photo.

  Damn.

  “How’s that leap looking now?” she said.

  Chapter 6

  WITH SEVENTY-FIVE miles between New Haven and the Upper West Side of Manhattan I could either suffer through the round-trip journey every week or make the best of it. I chose the latter, with more than a little help from a restored 1961 Triumph TR6 Trophy motorcycle, the same model that Steve McQueen rode like a boss in The Great Escape. A few hard twists of the wrist, a rev of
the engine, and the world and its worries are always left behind.

  Not today, though.

  Keeping pace—or, more aptly, tailgating like a son of a bitch—was that picture of me on the back of my book. What was left of me, at least. My eyes had been cut out, and the rest of my face had been slashed to threads with a precision blade. Unfortunately the artist didn’t sign his work, but he did manage to clip and paste a short sentence across my forehead, ransom note–style. Two words. Dead and Wrong. For good measure, Dead was underlined in red ink.

  Yeah, just in case everything else was too subtle, pal…

  Between the countless case studies I’ve read and the handful of actual murder cases I’ve been involved with as a forensic witness, I’ve had both a front-row seat and a backstage pass to the ultimate freak show, the things killers do to announce their horrific intentions. Really sick and depraved stuff.

  This guy going to town on my photo, on the other hand, was pretty tame by comparison. Still, for the first time, I wasn’t looking at some stranger, a person I didn’t know and had never met. I was looking at me.

  On this day of all days, too.

  “You’re late!” Tracy called out from the kitchen before I’d set two feet in our apartment. “Hurry up and shower.”

  Normally, I would’ve cracked a joke along the lines of, “My day was good, thanks for asking,” but that little touch of sarcasm would’ve only brought Tracy out of the kitchen to actually ask how my day was, and it just didn’t feel like the right moment to announce that there might be some crazed lunatic out there who wants to kill me.

  So instead I hurried up and showered.

  “What are you going to wear?” asked Tracy, appearing in the doorway of the bathroom minutes later as I was toweling myself dry.

  “Let me guess,” I said, although I was hardly guessing. “Whatever you just laid out for me on the bed?”

  “That depends. Were you about to throw on some old jeans and a T-shirt?”

  Guilty as charged. “Yep.”

  “Then, yeah,” said Tracy with a laugh. “What I just laid out for you on the bed.”

  “You do realize the whole purpose of this visit is so they can see that we’d be normal parents,” I said. “How much more normal does it get than jeans and a T-shirt?”

  “Do you think the gentleman interviewing us will also be wearing jeans and a T-shirt?” asked Tracy.

  Rats, outsmarted again. No wonder we’re together…

  “Hey, how do you know it’s a guy who’s coming?” I asked.

  “Don’t you remember? We briefly met him,” said Tracy. “Barbara introduced us.”

  Barbara was the head of the adoption agency. “Trust the process,” she told us during our initial screening meeting. “It will feel like hell sometimes, but it will all be worth it.”

  Amen. There’s nothing on this planet that Tracy and I want more than a child of our own to love. It’s just so dangerous to get our hopes up too much, though.

  “Oh, yeah, I remember that guy,” I said. “He looked like Mr. French.”

  “That’s another thing,” said Tracy. “No obscure references during the interview.”

  “What do you mean? Family Affair isn’t obscure. Uncle Bill, Buffy, Jody…Mr. French? It’s a television classic.”

  Tracy gave me “the Look.” I never fared well against the Look.

  “Okay,” I said. “No jeans, no T-shirt, and no classic television show references. Anything else?”

  Tracy came over with a kiss and a smile. “Don’t get me started.”

  Shortly thereafter, the doorbell rang. I tucked in my button-down and straightened out the pleats on my very respectable-looking khakis before joining Tracy at the door.

  Trust the process. Let the home interview begin.

  Too bad it was over before it even started.

  Chapter 7

  “OH,” SAID the woman. It was one measly little word.

  But, oh, the way she said it…

  She was standing in the hallway and staring at us, wondering if she had the right apartment. She quickly checked the clipboard in her hand. Once, then twice.

  “Dylan and Tracy?” she finally asked.

  “Yes, that’s right,” I said as cheerfully as I could.

  Again she checked her clipboard. “Yes, well, then…I’m Ms. Peckler from the Gateway Adoption Agency. Mr. Harrison had a family emergency this afternoon, so I was asked to step in,” she said. “You were expecting him, correct?”

  “Yes, that’s right,” said Tracy, albeit far less cheerfully.

  Shit. The fuse was lit.

  Ninety-nine percent of the time, Tracy was the calm and patient one while I was the loose cannon, the sufferer of no fools. But look out for that damn 1 percent of the time.

  For instance when a priggish woman with a clipboard says “Oh” with just the wrong kind of inflection.

  To most people it would have all the resonance of a dog whistle, but for those of us who have been on the receiving end of it more times than we’d ever care to remember, it might as well have been screamed through a bullhorn.

  Still.

  “Please don’t,” I whispered out of the side of my mouth.

  Tracy turned to me. “Don’t what?”

  “It’s the name thing,” I said. “She didn’t—”

  “It’s not my name she has a problem with,” said Tracy.

  “What’s going on?” asked Ms. Peckler.

  Bad question, lady.

  “What’s going on is that it doesn’t matter how many times you look down at that clipboard of yours, because every time you look up I’m still going to be a dude,” said Tracy.

  Boom, there it was.

  “Excuse me?” said Ms. Peckler.

  “I think you heard me,” said Tracy.

  “I don’t think I like what you’re insinuating,” said Ms. Peckler, placing her nonclipboard hand firmly against her hip.

  “Then I’ll ask you very clearly,” said Tracy, his law school degree kicking in, as it often did when he wanted to cut to the chase. “Do you personally have a problem with two gay men wanting to adopt a baby?”

  I so wanted Tracy to be wrong on this one. I wanted Ms. Peckler, all prim and proper with pearls, to set the record straight—that she didn’t have time to read our case file and had assumed that Tracy would be a woman, understandably so, and that her “Oh” was nothing more than the surprise of realizing she was mistaken.

  This was the Upper West Side of Manhattan, after all, the supposed tolerance capital of the world.

  But it was wishful thinking, and I knew it. I heard what Tracy heard. After a few seconds of silence—which also spoke volumes—Ms. Peckler essentially confirmed it.

  “What I personally think of the lifestyle choice you two have made is separate from the job I have to do,” she said. “I’m a professional, and I’m insulted that you would accuse me of being otherwise.”

  Lifestyle choice?

  Tracy turned to me again. “I don’t really know where to begin with that,” he said.

  Nor did I. But I gave it my best shot. “You know, this reminds me of an episode of Family Affair…”

  By then Ms. Peckler was already halfway down our hallway, heading to the elevator.

  I closed the door. The sound of the latch catching—snap!—jolted Tracy out of the moment.

  “Oh, Christ, what have I done?” he asked.

  We’d been married for four years. We were a couple for three years before that and had first met almost fifteen years ago, in college. By now we could do more than finish each other’s sentences; we could start them. We always seemed to know what the other was thinking, and this was no different.

  But what got me was the expression on Tracy’s face. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen with him. Never, not ever, had he looked so panicked, so consumed by instant regret.

  Still, I could’ve been mad. Furious, even. The process. We’d already devoted so much time and energy to it. Stacks
of paperwork. Endless phone calls to government offices. On the surface it seemed crazy that Tracy couldn’t overlook the ignorance of one person. It was all a dog and pony show anyway, this in-home interview.

  Yet I wasn’t mad. Far from it. If anything, I was more convinced than ever that Tracy and I were ready to be parents. Good parents.

  “What you’ve done is the same thing we would’ve taught our child,” I said. “Always stand up for yourself.”

  Chapter 8

  “I KNEW you’d call,” said Elizabeth.

  I knew I would, too. “For the record, though, that was by far the worst attempt at reverse psychology I’ve ever seen,” I said. “And I’ve seen them all, Detective.”

  Elizabeth looked over at me, sitting in the shotgun seat of her unmarked Ford sedan. We were driving through Central Park late the next morning via the 65th Street Transverse, below Sheep Meadow. “It couldn’t have been that bad,” she said.

  She was right. I was there with her, after all, even after she’d told me at Jojo’s that it was best if I didn’t strap on my junior detective badge and get too involved with the investigation. She could always follow up with me if she had any more questions. I could advise her from the sidelines.

  Of course, she knew all along I wasn’t a sidelines kind of guy.

  Hence my calling her first thing that morning. Had it not been the weekend, though, my first call would’ve instead been to the head of the adoption agency, Barbara Nash, to discuss the disaster of the in-home interview that never even made it into our home. Most Manhattanites have their cell numbers printed on their business cards. Barbara, a transplant from Montana, didn’t. I was fairly certain that wasn’t an oversight.

  “There it is,” said Elizabeth, pointing.

  As fast as you can say “Sherman Hemsley,” we’d crossed over to the Upper East Side, arriving at Jared Louden’s town house on 68th Street near the corner of Fifth Avenue.

  “Must be nice,” I said.

  Elizabeth nodded. “Yeah. Swanky neighborhood.”