Murder Games Read online

  “I don’t need any convincing. I was there.”

  I turned so he could look at me. I wanted him to see my face, my eyes, to know that I was telling the truth. He kept staring straight ahead, though, and in the silence that followed I got the sense that I was missing something. This was about more than our adopting a baby. This was about us.

  “You have feelings for her, don’t you?” he asked.

  “Don’t be silly,” I said.

  “I’m not being silly,” he said. “Be honest.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “I was there, too,” he said. “I heard the nurse. Elizabeth wakes up, and you’re her first thought.”

  “Tracy, look at me,” I said. He finally did. “Of course I have feelings for her, but it’s different. They’re not the same feelings I have for you, that I’ll always have for you.”

  He looked into my eyes. He could see the truth.

  “I’m sorry. I guess I just needed to hear you say it.”

  “It’s okay,” I assured him.

  He smiled. “She is pretty good-looking, I have to admit.”

  “Yeah. If I were straight I’d be all over her,” I said.

  “Yeah. Me, too,” he said.

  It felt good to laugh. It felt even better to hear Tracy laugh. He turned back to the window, pointing. “You see the one in the back row?”

  I followed the line of his finger. “Second from the right?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  A healthy baby boy—very healthy—was fast asleep in his bassinet, his chubby, round face all scrunched up. His little blue cap had slid off his head, revealing not a stitch of hair.

  “Uncle Fester from The Addams Family,” I said.

  Tracy laughed again. “Totally, right?”

  “Another classic TV show, by the way.”

  “How did I know you were going to say that?”

  “Because you know me all too well.”

  “I do,” said Tracy. “Don’t I?”

  “Yes,” I said, taking his hand. “You do.”

  Chapter 102

  I NEVER understood the expression “sleeping like a baby.” All the babies I’ve ever known or heard about slept like alarm clocks, waking up their parents every few hours without fail.

  “How did you sleep?” asked Tracy late the next morning.

  “Like a log,” I answered. Logs make much more sense. They lie there and don’t move. That was me. Ten hours of blissful sleep, followed by a shave, a shower, some coffee, a bagel, and some more coffee.

  Elizabeth had been moved out of the ICU. I checked in with her briefly. Her mother and sister were with her, and I told her I’d stop by later in the afternoon after I picked up my bike from the Fiftieth Precinct.

  “Have you watched any of the news on TV?” she asked.

  “No, not yet,” I said.

  “What about the Gazette? Have you seen it?”

  “Do I want to?”

  “I don’t know, Dr. Death. Personally, I think your ego was too big to begin with,” she said.

  I hung up and checked out the online edition of the paper on my laptop. Grimes was true to his word on both counts. One, I had a new nickname whether I liked it or not. Two, he made me look good.

  Of course, the better I looked, the better he looked. In fact the way he described “hunting down the Dealer,” one would think that Elizabeth and I were attached to him at the hip. Even Brian Williams would’ve snickered at that.

  To his credit, though, Grimes took sole responsibility for getting the story wrong about Kingsman. He could’ve hid behind the Gazette and its editors, but he stepped up and shouldered all the blame.

  Multiple witnesses had seen a man wearing Kingsman’s fedora and duffle coat—the one with the toggle buttons—in the building where Reginald Hicks lived. He was the supposed contract killer Kingsman had hired and subsequently murdered to cover his tracks.

  It was Kingsman’s fedora and coat, all right, only it was Timitz wearing them. He had taken them from Kingsman’s home while the judge was away giving a lecture at the Pritzker School of Law at Northwestern University.

  Perhaps more impressive than Grimes’s mea culpa, however, was how quickly and accurately he was able to dissect the Dealer’s background, linking it not only to his motivation but also to the means by which he carried out his murders. Grimes joked that when we first met he understood only half of my book. Truth was, he had it down cold.

  Elijah Timitz was the troubled adopted son of Bill and Mallory Timitz from Buffalo, New York. Bill was a demolition contractor whose company specialized in felling major structures using targeted explosions. Mallory worked as a technician at a platelet and neutrophil immunology laboratory. In other words, Elijah Timitz grew up around blood and dynamite. He was smart and had high standardized test scores but was known as a loner. As for his propensity for guns and knives, Grimes noted that Timitz had participated in survival camps in upstate New York and paid membership dues at two different shooting ranges.

  Grimes was even able to discover how Timitz could’ve known Jared Louden’s rare AB negative blood type. As a research assistant for Judge Kingsman, Timitz had access to a police report of a DUI arrest in which Louden refused a Breathalyzer test in favor of having his blood drawn.

  All in all, Grimes proved to be more of a journalist than people gave him credit for, myself included. He was thorough yet concise, writing in a style that was compelling without being overly burdened with hyperbole.

  I couldn’t know it at the time, but he only made one mistake. Actually, it was more like an omission.

  Only minutes after I was done reading all Grimes’s reporting in the Gazette, my phone rang. It was the landline.

  I didn’t recognize the number, but I answered anyway.

  “Hello?”

  It was Timitz.

  Chapter 103

  THE FEELING was more than déjà vu as I walked into the forensic biology laboratory on East 26th Street. It was dread.

  “You need to see something,” Dr. Ian Wexler had told me over the phone. “It’s Timitz.”

  The Office of Chief Medical Examiner still reeked of antiseptic, but Wexler’s attitude toward me had completely changed when I greeted him in his autopsy suite. He’d read what Grimes wrote in the Gazette. He didn’t actually tell me that, nor did he have to. The fact that he dialed my number before calling the police said it all. Wexler was cutting out the middleman.

  Apparently, Elijah Timitz had something else he wanted to share with me.

  “It’s on his inner forearm, a few inches up from the wrist,” said Wexler, walking over to Timitz. I didn’t know it was Timitz until he pulled back the sheet covering him. “The onset of lividity removed the swelling and redness, but the raised skin still gives it away. It’s around two days old. Three tops.”

  I was looking at a tattoo on Timitz’s arm. It was a black spade with an A in the middle of it. The ace of spades.

  Had it been an old tattoo, the takeaway might have been different. Timitz liked cards, so—in keeping with permission theory—it only made sense that he would target his next victims by using cards. The fact that this was a new tattoo, and its location on his body, suggested something else entirely.

  The Dealer was dead, but he wasn’t done.

  Is it really possible?

  If Timitz truly had one more trick up his sleeve, then it would be one for the ages. A serial killer who managed to kill from the grave.

  “Who else knows?” I asked.

  “Only you so far,” said Wexler. “Obviously, though, I’ll need to put it in my report.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  Wexler gazed down at Timitz. “You know, I usually never cover anybody with a sheet in here,” he said. “This guy, though? I can barely stand to look at him.”

  I understood. Yet looking at Timitz was suddenly all I could do. I stared at the bullet holes, shots that I had fired. The hol
es were black, the skin around them singed. I stared at Timitz’s face, his almost serene expression. His eyes were closed, but it still felt as if he were staring right back, willing me on.

  C’mon, Professor. You didn’t think I’d simply go gently into that good night, did you?

  This was his plan from the very beginning. He always intended to die for his cause. But this part didn’t make sense.

  He was hell-bent on exposing Judge Kingsman for being a pawn of an unjust legal system. Mission accomplished. Grimes wrote about it ad nauseam in the Gazette.

  So why kill someone else? Who was the ace of spades?

  Most of all, how could Timitz do it while lying here on this slab?

  That’s for you to figure out, Professor.

  This is really why I chose you.

  Chapter 104

  TICK-TOCK…

  With a picture of the tattoo on my cell phone, I was quickly in a cab again and heading north to the Fiftieth Precinct to retrieve my bike. The other destination was on my way. I was going to stop back at Kingsman’s house, in Riverdale.

  All things considered, the judge had gotten lucky. As Elizabeth could attest to, Emily Louden wasn’t exactly a crack shot. The bullet that hit Kingsman got him cleanly in the arm. It was in and out and only flesh. No bone. He’d be in pain for a few days, but he had the luxury of going home without having to spend a night in the hospital.

  “Greetings, Dr. Death,” he said with a wry smile, standing in the paneled foyer of his Tudor home, wearing the same yellow socks and funky red robe he’d been wearing when we first met. With the blue sling supporting his arm, he had all the primary colors covered. “To what do I owe the house call?”

  The Dr. Death wisecrack meant I didn’t need to ask if he’d seen the Gazette. He was up to speed on everything Grimes had written.

  There was no certainty at this point, only educated guesses and good old-fashioned reasoning. If Kingsman was the link to all the previous victims, he somehow had to be linked to the next one.

  Only this was different. Why would Timitz wait until after he framed Kingsman if the ace of spades were simply another one of his cases?

  Of course, logic isn’t always the strong suit of serial killers.

  For one reason and one reason only I didn’t begin by showing Kingsman the photo of the tattoo or even mention it. Timitz turned out to be the Dealer, but that didn’t explain where Kingsman had gone the night Timitz was at his house. It was nagging at me. I was curious.

  When Kingsman hesitated after I asked him, I was really curious.

  “I spent the night at the Harvard Club,” he said. “I was spooked when you and Detective Needham came to talk to me. Even though I didn’t think I was the queen of hearts, I live alone and didn’t feel safe.”

  Fair enough. But the Harvard Club?

  Kingsman wasn’t a member. He couldn’t be. He wasn’t a Harvard graduate, nor had he ever taught there—the only two ways you would be allowed to spend the night in one of the club’s guest rooms in Manhattan. Unless, of course, someone with enough clout pulled some strings.

  “Beau Livingston, Mayor Deacon’s chief of staff, went to Harvard,” I said. “Did you know that?”

  Kingsman’s previous hesitation now seemed like a blip. This was a full-on freeze-up. The judge was hiding something.

  “Yes, I did know that,” said Kingsman finally. “Beau’s the one who arranged my staying at the club.”

  “That was nice of Beau,” I said.

  “It was.” Kingsman’s tone shifted on a dime. It was as if he were reminding himself that this was his house and I was a guest, an uninvited one at that. “Is that what you’ve come to talk to me about?” he asked.

  The subtext was clear as could be. If it is, you won’t be staying long, Dr. Death.

  “No. It’s something else,” I said, taking out my phone. One click brought up the picture. “I wanted to show you something.”

  Kingsman looked at the tattoo. I didn’t even get the chance to tell him the arm belonged to Timitz.

  “Oh, shit,” he said.

  He rolled up the right sleeve of his red robe, showing me the same tattoo.

  “He wants you dead after all,” I said.

  “No,” said Kingsman. “It’s not me.”

  He told me why. Then he told me who. There was another ace of spades.

  “Oh, shit,” I said.

  Chapter 105

  THE BASIS for any murder: motive and means.

  Kingsman had said enough for me to figure out the motive; now it was all about the means.

  How does Timitz kill the mayor of New York City?

  “Tell him it’s urgent!” I yelled into my cell phone while breaking around half a dozen traffic laws at the same time. I was going ninety on a motorcycle without my helmet so I could talk on the phone while weaving in and out of traffic on the West Side Highway.

  “I’m sorry. He’s not available,” said Deacon’s assistant. I could barely hear her with the wind whipping past my ears.

  “What about Livingston? Is he in his office?”

  “What did you say your name was again?” she asked. “Reingold?”

  For Christ’s sake. “Dylan Reinhart!”

  “Oh, of course…Dr. Reinhart,” she said. Nice to know she was up on current events. It’s not like she worked at City Hall or anything.

  Her knowledge of who I was at least got me what I needed—the mayor’s whereabouts. Livingston was with him. Only I could still barely hear her.

  “Say that again—where are they headed?” I asked.

  In my mind, all I could see was the pain on Kingsman’s face when I pressed him about his relationship with the mayor. He didn’t want to tell me anything, but he had to. He always had his friend’s back.

  The two were among a handful of air force pilots who called themselves the Black Aces based on the black-ops missions they flew in Lebanon during the mid-1980s. Kingsman was one. Edward “Edso” Deacon was another. All of them had the same tattoo, and their bond was thicker than blood. After all, they had secrets they couldn’t even share with their closest family members.

  Decades later, long after their flying days were done, Kingsman and Deacon apparently racked up a few new secrets. Timitz had discovered what they were.

  “That’s all I can tell you,” said Kingsman. He wasn’t about to incriminate himself.

  It was enough, though.

  I shot between a Prius and a Range Rover, the southbound traffic on the highway slowing to a crawl near midtown. Pressing my phone even harder against my ear, I was just able to make out what the mayor’s assistant was saying. She, too, was practically yelling.

  “…to Queens…throwing out the first pitch…Citi Field.”

  “How long has it been on his schedule?” I asked.

  “I’m not exactly…at least a couple of…”

  “Did you say days?”

  “No,” she said. “Weeks.”

  She was saying something more, but I’d stopped listening. I couldn’t help it. The only thing in my head now was Timitz. He was dying on the couch in Grimes’s apartment, dying and singing.

  Take me out to the ball game…

  I cranked my right wrist, maxing the throttle, the wheels on my bike jerking forward as I swung out to the narrow shoulder, blowing through the red light at the 42nd Street exit before darting in front of the oncoming traffic to cut across midtown, heading east for Flushing, Queens. Were there any more laws I could possibly break?

  Hell, yeah.

  I was just getting started.

  Chapter 106

  “JESUS CHRIST, mate, you sound like you’re in a wind tunnel,” said Julian.

  It was actually the Midtown Tunnel. I was halfway through it, weaving in and out of both eastbound lanes like a guy with a death wish. Between my phone and the throttle, I didn’t have a free hand to flip my middle finger to all the cars honking at me. “I need you to check something,” I said.

  “Check?” J
ulian said, laughing. He knew I meant “hack.”

  “Administrative payroll for the New York Mets,” I said. “Elijah Timitz.”

  “You got it,” he said. “One minute.”

  Julian’s special talents aside—or maybe because of them—his next greatest asset was the ability to ignore human impulses. For example, anyone else would’ve asked, “What’s going on?” or “Why do you need to know if the Dealer ever worked at Citi Field?”

  If I was the one asking—that’s all he needed to know. The details could come later over a bottle of very expensive whiskey, my treat.

  Julian had asked for a minute. All he needed was half that.

  “No,” he said, coming back on. “No Timitz with the Mets.”

  “The entire payroll?”

  “Unless he was an intern.”

  “No; that wouldn’t make sense.”

  “Wait. There’s something else I could try,” he said.

  “What?” I asked. But that was my human impulse. Stupid question.

  “Got it,” said Julian, another half minute later. “They farm out some of their overnight security, a company in Queens called Guardian. Timitz started there six months ago. Anything else?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “One more thing.”

  In 2006, Alexander Litvinenko, a former officer with the FSB, Russia’s version of the CIA, died in London from acute radiation poisoning after being exposed to polonium-210. It didn’t happen by accident. Whoever did it never wanted to be caught, and to this day he still hasn’t been. Rest assured that the culprit wasn’t a serial killer.

  “If you wanted to kill someone from the grave—one man and one man only—and he’s about to throw out the first pitch at Citi Field in ten minutes, how do you do it?” I asked Julian.

  “Are we talking about Elijah Timitz, the son of a demolitions expert? If we are, you do it the same way I know that at this very moment you’re on Northern Boulevard, exactly four-tenths of a mile from the stadium,” said Julian. “Make that three-tenths now.”