Page 96 of Serial Killer Games

“What are you doing with my stuff?” Dodi barks when she reappears with an overnight bag and a Barbie backpack stuffed to bursting.

“I’m bringing it. Cat’s going to love it.”

Her mouth twists, and she stares hard and unblinking at the crappy tree. She doesn’t say anything as I take the first load down and then the second. I take everything—even the half-full bottle of wine and the skeleton. Finally, the apartment is bare except for the pathetic tree, and Dodi stands waiting for me with Cat in her arms, her sleeping face smooshed on hershoulder, her winter coat draped around her. I take the overnight bags and we go.

There’s one decoration I missed, and in the elevator, I notice it swinging from Dodi’s fingertips by its hair. Fake blood is smeared across her silicone face and there’s a spider glued to her forehead, but I’d know Verity’s glassy gaze anywhere. Dodi feels my eyes on her, and after a minute, she makes eye contact with me over Cat’s head. She shrugs, and I spot the tiniest glimmer of a smile.

It all goes in the trunk in a heap. The snow is coming down now, finally, in big downy flakes that fall slowly like they’re drifting through syrup. I open the back door for Dodi to deposit Cat, and she freezes.

“This car stinks. Itreeks.” She coughs and swallows.

Unfortunately, there was a week of above-freezing weather while I was at Bill’s and the bunny juice on the back seat had time to thaw and really come into its own. This is the clean side of the back seat, at least.

“We’ll drive with the windows open.”

But open windows in the middle of a cold winter night during holiday season is a very interesting thing to patrol cars, and my busted taillight from front-ending Charlotte’s dad is a legitimate excuse for a traffic stop.

A police car flashes its lights behind us as we turn onto the Christmas light–festooned Main Street, and I pull off to the side, right beneath an enormous Christmas tree all done up by the local business association. The cop slams his door and strolls up under the golden streetlights, his breath steaming in the cold air, fat snowflakes landing on his shoulders. He looks like he’s fresh out of the academy. I roll down my window and he bends down, leaning right into the car to catch a surreptitious whiff of my breath.

“Your taillight is smashed. License and registration.” He sniffs, then coughs and gags. “What the fucking—” He pulls back and gags again, and a ribbon of spit dangles from his chin. “Fucking Jesusshit. What is that smell?”

“It’s nothing.”

He stares at me in disbelief. I pass him my license and the car’s registration, and he frowns at it.

“This isn’t your vehicle.” He peers at my license and then my face.

“I have permission—”

“I’m going to ask you to step out of the vehicle, sir.” The cop paces a few feet away and pulls his radio off his belt.

Next to me, Dodi’s eyes are wide, her jaw clenched. She turns to look at me. “Is this car stolen?”

I balk. “No. Grant lets me—”

“Did your ex-roommatereportthis car as stolen?” Her nostrils flare. “I’m practically anacquitted murderer, you fucking idiot!” she whisper-hisses out of the side of her mouth. “I have to toe the fucking line! I can’t be driving around in the middle of the night in a stolen supercar!”

“Sir!” Baby Cop shouts.

I unbuckle my belt and open my door. My fingers are clumsy.

“Don’t let him look in the trunk,” she hisses without moving her lips.

“Why not?”

“Are you—JesusChrist,Jake,” she says, turning to me and dropping the ventriloquism act. “There’s a mutilated sex doll, a real human skeleton, an open bottle of wine—two hundred thousand American dollars—”

“The skeleton’s real?”

“I don’t know, okay! It was Facebook Marketplace—”

“Out of the vehicle,sir!” the police officer says.

Dodi lunges for my jacket front. “Zip your fucking coat! You still have blood on your shirt!” she hisses. “Can you try not to act like a fucking serial killer for once?”

I snatch my zip up to my chin and step out onto the road.

“Stand right there,” the cop says, pointing. He speaks into his radio some more, and I make out the words “canine” and “backup” and not much else. When he turns back to me, he’s revved up. He’s floating a foot off the ground. This right here is why he went to the police academy. It’s all been building to this moment.

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