Page 6 of Serial Killer Games

“You never have any dog hair on your clothes. And because it’s a stock image. It’s the first picture that comes up when you google ‘golden retriever.’ I checked.”

I would never be that obvious. It’s the third image.

“Is this part of your pretending-to-be-normal disguise?” she asks.

“Yes. Is your cat part of yours?”

She swivels on me. “Cat?”

Earlier, I heard her asking her neighbor to feed her cat. I can hear all her phone calls from where I sit, and I’m fascinated by the rare details of Dolores’s out-of-office life that come my way. I collect them, polish them up, appraise theirvalue, and sort them into neat, meager piles. Pets resemble their owners, and I can picture the cat: vicious, sharp-fanged, black. Because of course she’s black.

She narrows her eyes dangerously at me. “Nothing gets past you, Jake. You’re a real bunny boiler, you know that?”

“What?”

“Am I going to come home someday to you making rabbit stew in my kitchen? Wearing my clothes? Blood smeared all over the cabinets? You picked the lock to my office. You went through my drawers.”

Just look at this little hypocrite.

“You went through my desk first. Maybe I should file an HR complaint.”

The split second of hesitation after my response gives her away. For a fleeting moment her face is afraid. Drawing the attention of HR scares the bejeesus out of her. A tiny, doubtful seed of suspicion morphs rapidly into a plant on time lapse. Her reluctance to tell me her name, her secret agent tactics, her remote office apart from everyone else—it all comes together. Suddenly I understand everything. I know her secret.

“What makes you think I haven’t beaten you to it?” she says airily. “I already spoke to HR.”

“You haven’t. And you won’t.”

“Don’t be so sure. I’ve been advised to keep a log.”

She hasn’t, and I’ve never been so sure about something in my life. I get off at Ground, and one backward glance reveals Dolores staring after me with a small line between her eyebrows.

“ ‘Grief,’ ” I say over my shoulder. “It’s a good name for you.”

“A more accurate translation would be ‘pain,’ ” she calls out. She says it like she’s cautioning me not to forget it.

The next morning I pull up my list. I create a new one every time I start at a new office. It’s my list of expendables, my list of people to be eliminated.

Dolores dela Cruz

I tuck her name in neatly at the bottom, under two dozen other names. My fingers hover over the mouse. What the heck. Why not? I cut her name and paste it at the top.

4

True Crime Aficionado

Dolores

It’s 8:30 a.m. on aFriday, and as usual I’m crammed into one corner of the elevator with my face in my phone as I ascend from basement parking to my floor. The doors sweep apart for a pit stop at Ground to welcome the usual crowd, but today…today, there’s a little ripple in the atmosphere, the universe exhaling its breath on the back of my neck, and I look up to see the back of a head with familiar, neatly trimmed dark hair. Dark gray coat, gray slacks, black gloves. Ted Bundy in the elevator. The dashing stranger strangler.

I don’t get off at Fourteen or Fifteen or Sixteen. I stay put and watch from my corner as he reads text messages on nearby phone screens, tilts his head to the conversation around him, studies faces and notes the floors they sort themselves onto.

He steps off at Twenty, and I stay, chewing my lip. And maybe it’s the boredom building in my head, making my brain slide out my ear like a piece of charcuterie sliding off a cracker, but a chime tinkles, a prancing little dance of mallets on axylophone that no one around me hears—a podcast jingle, the soundtrack to my boring little life.

My life was interesting, once.

Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle.

I jab the button just in time to stop at Twenty-one, cross the hall, and glide down the fire escape stairs, my heels snapping violently against the concrete steps. I peer through the door before stepping out onto Twenty. Coast clear.

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