Game of Death (11 page)

‘The police have to find him. That’s their job,’ I point out.

‘Maybe,’ she concedes. ‘But the police didn’t create him; we did.’ I glance over at her and study her face for a second. Her profile is lit by the street lights,
and the silhouette looks almost regal. Her chin is set, and I can tell that she has taken this on as a mission of hers. She is clear that if we do not find
De Sade
she will view it as her
fault.

‘That’s bullshit,’ I say. ‘We didn’t create this sick asshole. If NextLife didn’t exist, he’d still be killing girls; he just wouldn’t be
practicing.’

‘We’re making it easier.’

‘How? He still has to go out and find them. He still has to actually do the murders.’

‘I’m not talking about logistics,’ Yvette says. ‘I’m talking about mentality. We’re making it easier for people to see what it’s like; to see whether
they like it.’

‘You could say that about almost every technology on the Internet.’

‘Maybe that’s right.’

I shake my head. ‘I want to catch this guy as much as you do, but I’m not putting this on you or me, or the company. This is all on the guy who’s doing it. It stops there;
we’re not responsible for how people use the site. You understand that?’

‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘I guess.’ She doesn’t sound very convinced. ‘We still need to catch him.’

Yvette gets out of the car at my house and comes in for a drink; we both need one. Ma is awake and sitting in the kitchen, her oxygen tank parked next to her chair, the hose
slipped over her back and snaked around under her nose. I’m thankful, at least, that she is wearing a housecoat. Not that it would make much difference to Yvette; she’s known Ma a long
time.

‘Hey, Mrs C.,’ Yvette says as she walks in, goes over to the refrigerator and pulls out two beers. ‘How’s it going?’

‘Help yourself,’ Ma says. There’s a tone in her voice, but I know it’s for effect. It took some time, but Ma eventually came around to liking Yvette years ago.

‘Thanks,’ Yvette says, ignoring the tone. She walks over and sits at the table with my mother, looks at the mug between my mother’s hands. ‘Coffee at night?’

‘Helps me sleep.’

‘Decaf?’

‘Irish.’

‘Ah.’

I shake my head. ‘Ma, the doctors said you’re supposed to be off that stuff.’

‘Doctors said I was supposed to die last winter. You want me to start doing now everything they tell me I’m supposed to do?’ She looks at Yvette. ‘I never had much use
for rules,’ she says with a shrug.

‘One of the few things we have in common,’ Yvette says with a wry smile.

My mother narrows her eyes at Yvette, examining her face. Yvette stares back, refusing to back down. I think this might go on all night. ‘You having sex with my son?’ Yvette is
taking a sip of her beer when Ma asks the question, and she snarfs some of it up on the table, drawing a look of satisfaction from my mother.

‘Ma!’ I yell.

‘What?’ She gives me the look of the falsely accused. It’s one I’m sure she practiced in the mirror for hours when she was younger, for all manner of occasions. She looks
back at Yvette. ‘Well?’

Yvette has recovered and waves me off as I begin to protest again. ‘No, Mrs C. We’re not having sex.’

‘What, you don’t like my boy?’

‘I like him fine.’

‘You just like girls better?’

That draws another laugh from Yvette. ‘That would be easier, wouldn’t it? No, I like guys, but we’re just friends.’ She looks at me. ‘And he hasn’t
tried.’

I am starting to feel very uncomfortable with this conversation. ‘We’ve got a long day tomorrow,’ I offer, in a futile hope to move off the subject. Ma is having none of it,
though.

She turns back to me. ‘You ain’t tried?’ she barks at me. ‘Why not?’

‘Ma—’

‘Don’t
Ma
me.’ She gives Yvette an evaluating look. ‘I’m not sayin’ she’s exactly my cuppa tea, but she’s got a decent face, and with
that hair she’s gotta be easy.’

‘Excuse me?’ Yvette protests, but I can tell she’s more amused than upset.

‘You spend enough goddamned time with her,’ Ma continues. ‘Shit, the last girlfriend you had was that uptight little bitch from that college you went to. And that was –
what, three years ago?’

‘We’re done with this conversation,’ I say.

‘I’m just sayin’, I don’t want people in the town thinkin’ you’re a faggot.’

‘Ma!’

‘I got nothin’ against them. Jimmy – Ethel’s boy – the one who cuts the ladies’ hair down on Warren Street, I like him. Funny. But gay as the day is long, and
that’s fine for him. But you don’t have his style.’

‘Nick’s not gay,’ Yvette says. I look at her, and she gives a smile that is impossible to read. ‘That much I’m sure of.’

Ma looks back and forth between the two of us. ‘So?’

‘Go to bed, Ma,’ I say. ‘I’ll be up to check on you in a little while. After I make sure Yvette gets home.’

Ma shakes her head as she stands and maneuvers her oxygen tank toward the stairs. ‘Ah, shit, I don’t get you young people these days. When we were your age we knew how to spend our
time, and it wasn’t talkin’.’

‘Ma!’

She disappears around the corner, calling out behind her, ‘I’m just sayin’!’

Yvette’s house is walking distance. I go with her, just to make sure she gets there okay. She protests that she doesn’t need me to be safe, and I know it’s
true, but I go anyway. Chivalry still exists on the streets of places like Charlestown. It’s a place where people take pride in doing things the way they’re supposed to be done –
for good or bad. The honor code that’s followed here is cracked and dented, and at times runs counter to the way things should be in a perfect world, but it provides a set of rules that
people understand.

‘Sorry about Ma,’ I say as we walk. We’ve been quiet for the first block or so, my mother’s comments hanging between us like the scent of opportunity.

She shakes her head. ‘She’s an original.’

‘She is that.’

I start to say something, but the words get caught in my throat. I know that she is waiting for me to do or say something – anything that will open the door between us – but I
can’t. And, knowing that I can’t, I am at a loss for any sort of coherent expression. How can I possibly tell her that I can’t focus on anyone else at the moment because
I’ve become obsessed with a mirage?
I’m sorry, Yvette, you’re great, but I’m obsessed with a computer-generated girl who gets killed in an online snuff-scene
. . .
I’m embarrassed just thinking about it.

We are standing there, so close together that I can feel the heat coming off her body. She’s looking at me with curiosity. ‘I’ve always wondered,’ she says.

‘We have to meet Killkenny early tomorrow. We should get there before him, just to prep people; make sure they don’t freak out.’

‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘I should probably go in.’

We are standing at the edge of the sidewalk in front of her house, looking at each other, neither of us knowing quite what to say or do next. She leans in toward me, the way she might if she was
going to kiss my cheek, except that she doesn’t turn her face the way she would if the target was really my cheek. I lean in, too, the reality of the moment overcoming the loyalty I feel to
my other fantasy. I know we are about to kiss and that, once we do, it won’t stop, but I don’t have the energy to fight it. It’s like there is a collision of emotions in my head,
and it sounds like the tearing of metal and the screeching of rubber. I lean in further, but she isn’t there.

I open my eyes and see that she is still in front of me, but no longer looking in my direction. Instead she is looking off down the street, her face frozen in shock. I turn and I see the
headlights streaming down the narrow street toward us, the car’s right wheels up on the curb. It takes just a flash before I realize that the sounds of tearing metal were not in my head. The
car coming toward us is out of control, tossing metal garbage cans against the houses like paper cups.

‘Look out!’ I scream. I grab for Yvette, but I am the slower of the two of us and she has already hurled herself against me, knocking me toward her house.

We fall over the scrub bush that hides the cement foundation. The ‘yard’ is a strip of weed-infested dirt no wider than a couple of feet. We fall onto that strip, she on top of me,
just as the car passes us by, close enough to rip out the scraggy bushes we’ve just fallen over; close enough for me to feel the exhaust on my face as the rear bumper comes within a couple of
inches of my forehead; close enough to smell the burned rubber as the tires narrowly miss Yvette’s leg.

The car looks as though it might crash into the telephone pole up the street, but after jockeying wildly for a moment, taking out several more garbage cans and two mailboxes, it rights itself
and lands unsteadily back on the road. It takes the next corner with enough speed to let out an anguished scream of rubber on cement, and then it is gone.

The street is quiet. One might expect that neighbors would quickly rush out to find out what caused the commotion, and perhaps offer help. They’re good people here, and that’s
probably their first instinct, but we’re close enough to the projects that gang violence is not unknown. There have been drive-bys within a few blocks of here in recent years, and while there
were no gunshots fired in this particular instance, it’s likely – and understandable – that the people in this area will wait to make sure there are no reprisals coming before
venturing out to see what assistance they can be.

‘Are you okay?’ I ask Yvette. She is lying on top of me, her head swung around looking in the direction where the car disappeared.

‘I didn’t see the license plate,’ she says angrily.

‘Who are you, Columbo? I didn’t even see what kind of a car it was.’

‘I didn’t either,’ she admits. ‘It looked like a sedan, but I couldn’t really tell.’

‘He keeps on the road that drunk, the cops will find him eventually. Wrapped around a tree, probably.’

‘You think?’ She sounds skeptical. No, that’s not right – she sounds suspicious.

‘What is it?’

She shakes her head. ‘Nothing.’

She’s still on top of me as we lie in the dirt, and she turns back around and looks at me. Her face is so close to mine, and even in the dark I can make out her eyes. They are pretty eyes
– deep green, warm and lively. But as I look into them, all I can think of is the fire within the eyes of my girl from the LifeScene.

‘We should call the police, just to file a report,’ I say.

‘Yeah, we should.’

‘And then I should go.’

There is a moment before she answers when she is just looking at me, a mixture of hurt and anger in her eyes. ‘Yeah, you probably should,’ she says.

The next morning Yvette acts as though nothing passed between the two of us the night before. I’m grateful for that. We’re dealing with enough at the moment that
recriminations over a near-kiss would just complicate matters. If there’s something between us that’s real and goes beyond friendship, it will still be there when things calm down.

I pick her up in the morning and we drive to the NextLife headquarters. We park in the back, and sit in the lot waiting for Paul Killkenny. She’s sipping a coffee out of a Styrofoam cup
that’s large enough to shelter kittens. The aroma of French vanilla swirls in the car, overpowering the acid sting of the small cup of black dark roast that I’ve almost finished.

‘Any word from the Charlestown cops?’ she asks.

I shake my head. ‘I checked in with them this morning. There were no other accidents reported last night, so at least whoever it was got home without killing anyone.’

‘Lucky,’ she says.

‘Yeah,’ I deadpan. ‘Lucky.’

At that moment Paul Killkenny pulls into the parking lot. He’s driving a black Chevy SS with dark tinted glass that rumbles low and fierce as it pulls around the tarmac. He sees my Corolla
and pulls in next to us. I get out, looking over his ride. ‘Subtle,’ I say.

‘More effective than a black-and-white,’ he says. ‘The bad guys know not to fuck with me.’

‘I bet they see you coming, too.’

‘I don’t work undercover,’ he says. ‘I want them to know when I’m in the neighborhood.’ He looks at the Corolla. ‘I see you’re still all about
impressing people.’

‘That’s how I roll.’

Killkenny looks at Yvette. ‘Sounds like you two had a close call last night. Hope you’re okay.’

‘How did you hear?’ Yvette asks.

‘Nick texted me this morning. Said you’d both been up late last night filing the report.’

‘It’s not the quickest process I’ve ever seen,’ she concedes.

‘I hope they catch the guy. Sounds like he could have killed you.’ She doesn’t respond. He looks up at the NextLife building, which towers over the area, coated in blue glass.
‘Speaking of subtle . . . ’ he says. ‘When did they finish this?’

‘Last summer. We’ve been in since October.’

‘What’s here?’

‘Pretty much everything except our server-farm, which is out in Hopkinton, and my division.’

‘Which they keep hidden in a basement.’

I nod.

‘So, what now?’

‘Let’s get you checked in and we can go see HR, see what we can find out about the murdered girls.’

The lobby is gleaming chrome and glass, with a reception desk that looks a little like an inverted shell. There are two security guards there. One is an attractive brunette in her twenties, the
other is a six-foot-two soup-can with a head. He hangs back and lets his partner deal with us. She smiles as she scans my ID, and then Yvette’s. Her smile hiccups for a second when Killkenny
presents his badge, but she recovers nicely. ‘He’s with me,’ I say. She nods and presses a button to let us through the turnstiles that lead to the elevator.

We head to the third floor, where most of the administrative offices are. I ask to see Helen Jimenez, our head of Human Resources. Because of the nature of what my department does, most of my
people are vetted fairly heavily, and I have regular meetings with Helen. I like her, and I’ve managed not to annoy or offend her, which means that she’s probably one of my biggest fans
at the company. I wait with Yvette and Killkenny in the reception area for about five minutes before Helen emerges.