Murder Games Read online

  Pulp?

  Clearly he wasn’t talking about orange juice. It was a drug. But Bryce had never heard of it before. How could that be?

  No matter. For the first time that night, Bryce VonMiller was genuinely interested in something. Intrigued.

  “Tell me more,” he said.

  Chapter 13

  “IN HERE,” said the guy, motioning to the last stall. Step into my office…

  Bryce followed him, any reservations subdued by the rush of the unknown—and, he hoped, an even greater rush after that. It had a nice ring to it, he thought. Concise and catchy. Pulp. All the kids are doing it—but not before I do it first.

  “Who are you supposed to be, by the way?” Bryce asked the guy, eyeing his wig and sunglasses, which all but obscured his face.

  “Michael Caine,” the guy answered.

  Huh?

  “Not exactly seeing it,” said Bryce with a chuckle. “Besides, he wasn’t in Masquerade.”

  “Yes, I know. He was in a different movie from the eighties. I liked it much better.”

  Bryce was about to ask which movie when the guy opened his palm to reveal a small syringe, half the size of a crayon. An orange crayon. The liquid loaded in the barrel was bright orange.

  “What’s up with the color?” asked Bryce.

  “Pulp,” said the guy. “Like with orange juice.” Get it?

  Bryce got it. He just wasn’t buying it, not yet. “I don’t do needles,” he declared with a wave of his hand.

  “Neither do I,” said the guy. “This doesn’t go in your veins. It’s like a B12 shot…only much, much better.”

  “So it’s a boost, like coke? Because coke I have.”

  “Believe me, you don’t have anything like this. Clean and quick, the ultimate jolt of adrenaline.”

  Bryce did a double take on the guy. He knew where B12 shots went. Was this some perv pulling a bait and switch? “You’re not just trying to get me to drop my pants, are you?” he asked.

  The guy ignored him. Instead he rolled up the sleeve of his black T-shirt. Clearly the issue was trust. How do dealers flush out narcs?

  “Like this,” he said, casually flicking off the needle cap. He jammed the syringe into the meat of his upper arm, pressing hard on the plunger.

  Clean and quick, all right. No sooner had the orange liquid disappeared into his skin than he threw his head back against the metal panel of the stall, his face laced with euphoria.

  Sold, thought Bryce. “How much?” he asked.

  “First one’s free,” said the guy, reaching into his pocket.

  He handed over another syringe that looked identical to the first and watched as Bryce mimicked the way he had flicked off the needle cap.

  “Pulp,” said Bryce with a confident nod.

  “Yeah, Pulp,” the guy echoed. “Enjoy.”

  Chapter 14

  BRYCE PLUNGED the needle into the meaty flesh of his upper arm, eyeing the bright orange liquid as it quickly drained from the syringe. The roller coaster was climbing that first big hill. The ride was about to begin. Pure anticipation. The rush. The euphoria.

  The pain?

  Bryce’s knees suddenly buckled as he stumbled backwards, banging his head hard against the stall. Reaching out, arms flailing, he tried to steady himself, but the feeling was nothing short of agony in every muscle, every fiber. There were lightning bolts shooting out from his spine, a fire raging through his insides. His arms, his legs—everything hurt all at once.

  His eyes begged. Make it stop! Please, please make it stop!

  Then, as quickly as it came, it did exactly that. It stopped. The fire extinguished. The pain gone.

  Two seconds later, though, he would’ve done anything to get it back.

  Move! yelled Bryce’s brain to the rest of his body. Do something. Say something. React!

  Only he couldn’t. He could see and he could blink, but nothing more. From head to toe, he was frozen. Paralyzed.

  Michael Caine smiled. He reached into his pocket, removing another needle and syringe. Only this one was bigger. Much bigger.

  “Have you read your Bible, Bryce?” he asked, flicking away an air bubble in the cartridge after removing the cap. The liquid was clear, not orange. “No, of course you haven’t, have you?”

  Bryce tried desperately again to move as he stared at the long needle. He knows my name. How does he know my name?

  Michael Caine shrugged. “To tell you the truth, I’m not much for religion,” he said. “But I do like the Bible. I like what it says about right and wrong and the nature of sin. Are you a sinner, Bryce? You are, aren’t you? I know you are.”

  Bryce screamed, if only in his head, as the tip of that long needle edged closer to him. Where is he going with it?

  The more he stared at it, the more the answer became clear right before his eyes.

  His left eye, to be exact.

  Bryce tried desperately to move again. He tried to fight back. Or escape. Or something other than what he was doing, which was nothing. The most his body would give him was a tremble, a sort of low-rumble seizure that did little more than make his heart race even faster. A harbinger of things to come. We all have to die some way, right?

  Michael Caine shook his head. “C’mon, hold steady for me, Bryce,” he said, annoyed. “Don’t fight it.”

  But cooperation was hardly to be expected, so he jammed the palm of his free hand against Bryce’s forehead, pinning him flat to the stall so he could peel back the eyelid enough to expose the orbital socket. Even the most thorough of coroners wouldn’t think to look there.

  “This is going to sting a bit,” he said, aiming the tip of the needle north of the pupil before plunging it into the sclera, otherwise known as the white of the eye.

  As he pushed down on the syringe he counted to five.

  One one thousand, two one thousand…

  Chapter 15

  THERE WAS no need to check the caller ID.

  I’d love to say that was deductive reasoning of the highest order, but it was really more like a gut feeling as I reached for my phone in the darkness, the ring waking only me and not Tracy, who pretty much could sleep through the apocalypse.

  I knew who was calling at three in the morning, and worse, I knew why.

  “So much for one and done,” said Elizabeth, letting out a sigh. “Sometimes it sucks to be right, doesn’t it?”

  Aaron VonMiller was the first guy I saw when I stepped out of the cab twenty minutes later in front of White Lines in SoHo. I’d never heard of the club.

  I recognized VonMiller from the myriad articles written about him, especially the one in New York magazine a year or so back. He was on the cover, a big close-up photo of him with his unruly salt-and-pepper hair, playfully scrunching his face to keep a fork wedged between his upper lip and nose, as though it were a mustache. The guy was a partner in nearly a dozen wildly successful restaurants in Manhattan. A few in Vegas as well.

  But there was nothing playful about VonMiller now. He was screaming at a cop who was blocking him from the entrance to the club. “That’s my son! That’s my son in there!” He was living a parent’s absolute worst nightmare in the middle of the night.

  I shot a text to Elizabeth as instructed.

  I’m here.

  Within seconds she was walking out of the neon-purple doors, finding me on the sidewalk among the crowd of onlookers.

  “Nice bed head,” she said, motioning for me to follow her.

  She led me past the velvet ropes, now strung with yellow police tape, and into the club, which looked like the last days of Studio 54. Totally eighties and—save for the requisite police and EMTs—totally empty.

  That changed when we turned a corner toward the bathrooms. Gathered by a cigarette machine that had been reconfigured to dispense condoms was a group of “kids” being interviewed by a detective, or so I assumed that’s what he was, his rumpled Men’s Wearhouse suit being the first clue.

  The kids, who looked barely o
ut of their teens, were clearly potential witnesses. Less clear, though, were their outfits, or whatever it was they were wearing. Was this supposed to be a costume party?

  “Don’t ask,” said Elizabeth after we walked by them.

  Two cops were flanking the entrance to the men’s room, one fidgeting with his phone. The other shot Elizabeth a look: What gives? “How much longer?” he asked her. “We really need to move him.”

  “Just one more minute,” she said without breaking stride.

  That generated another look from the guy—a series of them, actually—all aimed at me. Who the hell are you? What the hell took you so long to get here? And Can you hurry the hell up?

  Granted, I may have been reading a little too much into a single arched eyebrow.

  “This way,” said Elizabeth as we entered the bathroom. “He’s in the one on the end.”

  As we walked toward the last stall, the only sound I could hear was in my head. That’s my son! That’s my son in there! Somehow it didn’t seem right that I, a total stranger, got to see Aaron VonMiller’s dead son before he did.

  Then again, nothing seemed right about anything I was about to see. Except that I was meant to see it. That’s why I got the call from Elizabeth, who was “third-wheeling,” as she put it, on homicides across all precincts.

  The killer was talking to us again. To me.

  Without a word, Elizabeth stepped back so I could have a full view inside the stall, and for a few seconds I stared at Bryce VonMiller’s lifeless body crumpled on the floor, arms and legs askew. If I didn’t know better, he could’ve just been passed out.

  But I knew better. So did Elizabeth.

  “Where was it placed on him?” I asked.

  Chapter 16

  “IT WAS sticking out of his pants, the right front pocket,” said Elizabeth. “It’s been bagged and logged. Eddie’s got it.”

  “Who’s Eddie?” I asked.

  “That’s me,” came a voice from the doorway.

  Eddie was the detective in the Men’s Wearhouse suit. As he walked toward me under the glare of the bright white neon lights mounted on the bathroom walls, it became evident that he was also Eddie of the Hair Club for Men. His plugs looked as natural as Mike Huckabee at a tea dance in Provincetown.

  “Eddie, this is Professor Dylan Reinhart,” said Elizabeth, making the introduction. “Dylan, this is Detective Eddie Molson.”

  “Like the beer,” he said, shaking my hand.

  In his other hand was the evidence bag, exactly like the one Elizabeth had showed me in New Haven at Jojo’s. The difference was the playing card inside. There was no repeat of the king of clubs. Our killer had placed the two of hearts in the pocket of Bryce VonMiller’s pants.

  “Anything from the Brat Pack out there?” asked Elizabeth.

  Eddie rolled his eyes. “They’ll barely admit to having been in the bathroom,” he said. “They all knew of VonMiller—the kid had a rep—but the card didn’t mean anything to them.”

  Although I could hear what Eddie was saying, I was listening more to his body language. The slouched shoulders, the pinching of his brow. Not to mention the way he stole a peek at his watch after our introduction. I wouldn’t expect the guy to be daisy fresh on the graveyard shift, but he still had a job to do. Tired was one thing. This guy was simply going through the motions.

  “Did you only question them as a group?” I asked.

  You would’ve thought I just insulted his mother. “Excuse me?” he said.

  “They’re kids,” I explained. “Last I checked it’s still not cool to tell cops anything.”

  Eddie chuckled. “Last you checked, huh?”

  “I’m simply saying that one-on-one might work better.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” he said sarcastically. “Do you know what also might work better? Waterboarding. Perhaps we should do that, Professor. One-on-one, of course, not as a group.”

  I glanced over at Elizabeth, who was content to simply watch from her perch in Switzerland, albeit with a noticeable smile. Fellow detective or not, Eddie had led with his chin. All bets were off.

  “I’m sorry you’re offended, Detective Molson, like the beer, but I was simply making a suggestion,” I said. “Perhaps you couldn’t hear me clearly from where you’re phoning it in tonight.”

  Eddie looked like a nine on a standing eight count.

  “Christ, where’d you find this guy, Lizzie?” he asked.

  Elizabeth winced. She clearly hated being called Lizzie. “Yale,” she said. “Or was it MIT? Professor Reinhart has a PhD from both, so I can’t remember. He was also in Forbes magazine’s “30 Under 30” issue a few years back, but I suspect the dimples had more to do with that than anything else.”

  So much for Switzerland. And so much for Eddie.

  “Hey, go at it, Professor,” he said, pointing out to the hallway. “Go interview each and every one of those spoiled brats about their little dead friend in here, the club king.”

  Wait.

  “What did you just say?” I asked.

  “I said, you can go interview—”

  Elizabeth had heard the same thing. “No—the last part…what did you call him?” she asked.

  “The club king,” he said. “That’s what one of the kids called him. I asked if VonMiller partied a lot, and they told me he was always at all the clubs.”

  “Well done, Eddie,” I said.

  “What’d I do?” he asked.

  “You asked the right question,” said Elizabeth.

  He was still confused. “You messin’ with me?”

  “Not at all,” she said.

  “Does this mean you don’t want to do the one-on-one interviews?” he asked hopefully.

  “No, but you don’t have to bother asking about the two of hearts,” she said.

  “I didn’t know why I was asking about it in the first place,” he said. “What’s it supposed to mean?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Elizabeth.

  But that wasn’t entirely true. She and I both knew what the two of hearts meant.

  We just didn’t know whom it meant.

  Chapter 17

  THE COPS had all left. So had Eddie.

  During the one-on-one interviews, one of the kids “suddenly” remembered hearing something from the direction of the last stall. At the time, he didn’t think too much of it. “A lot of crazy stuff happens in these bathrooms,” he said. “People are weird.”

  This from a kid who had pink eyebrows, a double-pierced tongue, and a tattoo of Bea Arthur on his neck.

  As for Bryce VonMiller, he’d been wheeled out and taken to the morgue, his father having finally been allowed to see him before he was zipped up in a black body bag. I’d watched for a moment before turning away.

  And that was that.

  Nearly two hours after she’d first called me, Elizabeth and I were the only ones on the sidewalk outside White Lines, the last of the onlookers having long since dispersed.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “Home,” I said. Is that a trick question? Where else would I be going?

  Without another word she hit a speed-dial button on her phone. “Where are you right now?” she asked the person on the other end.

  I was trying to figure out who that could be at nearly five in the morning and how the answer to her question could be anything besides “In bed.”

  Of course, I really should’ve known.

  “Christ, I’m starving,” announced Allen Grimes, practically hip-checking me as he slid into our booth fifteen minutes later at the Marigold Diner in Greenwich Village. Not only was he up and awake, it was pretty obvious that our intrepid crime reporter hadn’t been anywhere near his bed yet. Or if he had, it wasn’t to sleep. The guy literally had lipstick on his collar.

  Elizabeth summed up Grimes on the ride over. His driver’s license says he’s fifty, his libido thinks he’s twenty, and his liver is convinced he’s Keith Richards.

  “Allen,” s
aid Elizabeth, “this is—”

  “Yeah, I know,” said Grimes, thrusting his hand at me. “Nice to finally meet you, Professor. Or do you prefer ‘Doctor’? I’m not ashamed to say that I understood only half your book.”

  “Not to worry,” I said. “The other half was just made-up bullshit.”

  He laughed loudly, the smell of alcohol, tobacco, and a way-overmatched Altoid blanketing my face. “Actually, that’s probably the half I understood!”

  He laughed some more as a waitress came over with a menu, but he waved it off, already knowing what he wanted. A Western omelet and a whiskey.

  “It’s after four,” said the waitress in a monotone, barely glancing up from her order pad. “I can’t serve you alcohol.”

  Grimes took a fifty out of his shirt pocket, placing it under the saltshaker. “That’s for you if you change your mind, sweetheart.”

  Elizabeth cocked her head at Grimes as the waitress walked away. “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “What are you going to do, Detective? Arrest her?” he asked.

  “You’d like that—an instant column,” said Elizabeth. “The only thing she’s coming back with is your omelet.”

  Grimes elbowed me in the ribs. “Tell her, Dr. Professor. Tell the pretty detective what you and I both know. Human behavior is more pliable than a bowl of mashed potatoes. And nothing whips it up better than the almighty dollar.”

  Before I could admit that the guy had a point, the waitress returned with a coffee cup. Quickly and smoothly, she set it down in front of Grimes while swiping the fifty from underneath the saltshaker.

  We all leaned over, peering into the coffee cup. It wasn’t coffee.

  “Cheers,” said Grimes, taking a sip of his whiskey. He wiped his mouth and grinned. “Now, what do you two have for me?”

  Chapter 18

  GRIMES WAS the newsman, but Elizabeth knew enough not to bury the lede. “We have a real live serial killer,” she said.

  “I thought we already knew that,” Grimes shot back, unimpressed. “Isn’t that what you told me?”