Page 44 of Serial Killer Games

“There’s been an accident,” I tell her when she’s close, jerking my head in the direction of the crowd outside.

“That’s too bad,” she says disinterestedly, like it’s too bad it’s just an accident and not something a little more premeditated, and we walk in the opposite direction across the lobby and out into the night.

We traipse along the sensory hellscape that is the Strip, the street crawling with life like a log was rolled away to reveal the wriggling insect city underneath. The sky is already black and bottomless, but everything around us glows, flickers, and gleams, sometimes in gaudy Christmas colors. On all sides, signs compete for our attention and our money, and all around us are idiots who think this is fun. Groups of young people, old people, friends taking selfies, couples holding hands. Dodistudies everything around us like an anthropologist observing a strange cultural phenomenon, and I study her.

Would Dodi snarl in disgust if I reached out and tookherhand? Or would she squeeze tight, digging her sharp nails into my skin?

Dodi spots the bill forMurderers at Workfirst. She presses ahead, and I follow, showing the tickets to the doorman.

Inside, the stage rises on one side and on the floor are tables. At table sixteen Dodi slings her purse onto a chair and it clunks, but she acts like nothing’s amiss, like it’s normal to tote bricks around. She orders us cocktails, but she’s twitchy all the while, glancing around this way and that, like she expects to see someone she knows. Or be seen by someone she knows.

And then it seems like exactly that happens. A thin, sharp-faced woman at the table just diagonal to us turns and looks directly in Dodi’s eyes. Her face flickers in recognition, then slackens into a studied neutral expression. She swivels back around, and next to me, Dodi freezes.

That’s when the lights dim. I want to ask her who the woman is, but a clip of familiar music plays, the xylophone jingle at the start of everyMurderers at Workpodcast, and two figures appear onstage in matching shirts that sayDead in Las Vegas. The room erupts, and one makes a production of casually sipping her cocktail while the other curtseys and smiles bashfully. I don’t recognize them until I hear their voices.

“All right, Murderheads,” Aya says, and it takes several minutes for the cheering and clapping to die down.

“As you know from reading the giant freaking sign at the door, we’re recording tonight, because we’re celebratingfive hundred episodes…”

Cheering erupts.

“…and to kick off, we’re going to play Name that Killer!”

The room loses it.

Bex continues. “If you’ve listened to our live event recordings, you know the drill! Each table will send up one representative when called. Send us your best, your funniest, your most dramatic. Act, mime, monologue—whatever you want—and the rest of us…will guess the murderer! We can’t stop you from using your phones to look up the name, but we hope your sense of self-preservation will compel you to keep that shit in your pocket. After all, we all know about five hundred ways to deal with you if you don’t!”

“And,” Aya shouts, “look lively! We’re going to see how many we can get through in thirty minutes!” She cups her hands around her mouth and hollers, “Table one, GO!”

A woman from table one sprints across the floor toward the stage, and when I glance over, the sharp-faced woman at the table diagonal to us is watching me over her shoulder.

“Who is she?” I ask Dodi. “The woman at that table?”

“No one,” Dodi says irritably, and quaffs half her cocktail. I know her well enough to know there’s no point in persisting.

“Will you do the Paper Pusher when they call us?” I ask.

Dodi’s eyes dart over to the sharp-faced woman, who’s no longer watching us. “I can’t. They haven’t done an episode on her yet.”

“ ‘Her’?”

She gives me a look. “It’s definitely a woman.”

I guess we won’t be making jokes about me being the Paper Pusher anymore. But she has no reason to be so certain. The thing is, I know a little more than most about the Paper Pusher urban legend.

A small woman steps up to the mic and the room fallsquiet. She pulls glasses out of her pocket, places them low on the tip of her nose, and says into the mic in a deep, manly voice, “Careful playing Texas Hold’em with me, because my card shark abilities will have you in achokehold—”

“Ed Scully, the Poker Choker!”

The room erupts in cheers and hoots.

“You don’t know it’s a woman,” I tell Dodi.

“Idoknow it’s a woman,” she says impatiently.

I’ve been looking forward to revealing that Aunt Laura tidied up four of his “victims,” that I temped at three of the offices where the “murders” happened. Her curiosity in me has always been my only angle, and I’ve been keeping this tidbit in my back pocket to bring out when I needed to.

I lean in to tell her, but she’s not paying attention to me. She twitches and huffs, then she pivots, looking at the faces around us, a captivating thought occurring to her. “I wonder how many murderers are in the audience tonight?”

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