The Killing Game. J. Kerley A.

got a call from Al Hernandez in Animal Control and it got bumped to me. Can you spare a few minutes to talk to the guy?”

      I called Hernandez. What I heard had me in my car five minutes later, roaring to northwest Mobile, up where the auto graveyards and carpet outlets turned into farms and woods.

      Hernandez was on a small county road, against a white van with DEPARTMENT OF ANIMAL CONTROL, MOBILE, ALABAMA on its side. A rope-skinny guy in a brown uniform, sleeves rolled up, sinewy forearms, he had a high forehead, inquisitive eyes and a neat mustache. He led the way to a slow-flowing muddy creek below the bridge, a shallow pool on the upstream side, sandy hummocks downstream. Trash thrown from above was everywhere.

      Swatting insects from my face, I followed Hernandez to the downstream side and smelled decomposition. Scattered across the ground were four small carcasses, cats. All were burned and split open, like they’d been gutted. Three lacked tails. Hernandez had the right instinct: the hairs stood up on the back of my neck.

      “Couple kids from a farm down the road found ’em,” he said. “I figure the carcasses got flung from a car, expected to float away. Some probably did, but these landed on high ground.”

      I studied the stinking ruination at my feet, sighed and ran to my cruiser, back thirty seconds later with latex gloves and a twenty-gallon trash bag.

      “What you gonna do?” Hernandez asked.

      “Get myself on the pathology department’s shit list for about a month,” I said.

       Chapter 6

      “Autopsy a cat?” Clair Peltier said, frowning at the lumpy bag in my hand. “Is that what you’re trying to say?”

      She was assembling instruments for a procedure. With her coal-black hair and outsize arctic-blue eyes, Clair Peltier, director of the southwest division of the Alabama Bureau of Forensics, was the only person I knew who made formless surgery garb look sexy. She flicked a switch, testing the high-powered light above. I made the mistake of looking up.

      “Actually, several cats,” I said, blinking away shapes floating before my eyes. Clair thumbed a button and water washed down the table. Satisfied with the flow rate, thumbed it off.

      “For what case, specifically?”

      “You know how the maniacs start, Clair. Bedwetting, fire—”

      Clair nodded to names on a whiteboard: four postmortems scheduled for today alone. “Autopsies are backlogged, Carson. The human kind. And I’m short a pathologist.”

      “Please, Clair?” I lifted the bag of dead cats and tried to appear needy.

      She shook her head. “There’s not even a case file to assign to the work.”

      “Clair …”

      “Sorry, Carson.”

      I was three steps gone when I turned and emptied the bag onto the gleaming table. Clair’s eyes flared. “What are you …” A tailless carcass caught her eye. She frowned and leaned closer to the charred husks that had once been living creatures, reading every mark and torment on the pathetic remains.

      “Put them in cooler eight,” she said. “I’ll invent a case number.”

      Gregory’s fingers tapped the keys of the computer on his desk, developing software for precision heat delivery in ceramic coatings applications. It was supremely boring. The company was located in Birmingham, but there was no need for Gregory to work on-site. In fact, he’d only visited the headquarters once, when he interviewed for the position. Because of his unusual health history, he’d undergone a trial period, but surpassed his employer’s expectations several times over. He worked an average of a dozen hours a week, though he billed for thirty. And was still lauded for his productivity and “elegant” shortcuts.

      He stood from his chair, stretched, ran a few faces found in a recent magazine – Congestion-free at Last; Travel Opportunities Await; Concerned About Inflation? – then went downstairs to find fuel.

      The carpeted stairs led to Gregory’s living room, low black-fabric couches and chairs with burnished-steel frames, the floor polished oak parquet, the lamps mere stalks with globes. The entertainment center held a large-screen television and the latest audio devices, including surround sound. The other rooms were decorated in the same spare and sleek fashion.

      Gregory had bought the house after qualifying for his inheritance. The first month his sole furnishings were a mattress on the floor, table and chair in the kitchen, an overstuffed reading chair and lamp and a television to provide items to talk with the morons about.

      Life had been simple and perfect.

      Three weeks after Gregory’s arrival Ema had visited unexpectedly. He inspected his visitor via the door lens, seeing a pink pendant floating between a double chin and milk-white cleavage. For a split second his knees loosened and his breath seemed to stick in his throat. Inhaling deeply, he’d opened the door with a broad expression from a dishwasher-soap ad, You’ll Say WOW at Sparkle-Clean Dishes!

      “I knew it’d take you for ever to invite me over,” Ema said, already apologizing. “I hope you’re not angry with me dropping by and—”

      “It’s a wonderful surprise. I’ve just been working.”

      Ema entered the living room. “Goodness, where’s the rest of your furniture?”

      “I, uh, haven’t had time.”

      “You brainy types. We’ll start at the stores this weekend.”

      “I … have someone helping me already,” Gregory invented, aghast at the prospect of spending hours in Ema’s company, his face going into spasms with the effort of matching her enthusiasm for each color and pattern and item of furniture.

      Ema clapped her hands. “You hired a decorator!”

      “He’s coming this week,” Gregory said. “I can’t wait to get started.”

      Cursing his fate, he contacted a decorator minutes after Ema padded away. The man arrived the next day, a leather-trousered robot that walked as if it were dancing. Gregory’s instructions had been simple: “Make it look like someone lives here.”

      “Don’t you live here?” the decorator replied, puzzled.

      Gregory felt his intestines begin to constrict as his mind raced to find the solution. Then the deco-robot clapped its hands and laughed as if in appreciation of a joke. “Oh, wait … I get it. You want a lived-in quality. Something comfy. No problem. I just need your preferences in style, colors …”

      Gregory retreated to his Faces room, digging through magazines and expelling gases from his painful tubes. Five minutes later he handed the man a page from a magazine. “This is it.”

      The deco-robot studied the page, puzzled again. “Danish ultra-Modern. Not what I picture as old-shoe comfy.”

      “That’s what I want,” Gregory said, tapping the photo. “It looks easy to care for.”

      “I’ll contact sources, show you photos. I’ll call soon with choices in—”

      “No,” Gregory said. “You do it. Colors, furniture. Everything.”

      The man showed confusion again, but Gregory spoke four words he’d found helpful in dealing with the robots.

      He said, “Price is no object.”

      The decorator said, “Whatever you want, sir.”

      The empty spaces had been filled with couches, chairs, sleek floor lamps, accessories such as the red glass vase on the mantel. Above the mantel hung a huge, multicolored mish-mash the decorator had called “an abstraction redolent of Kandinsky”.

      Interested