Page 45 of Serial Killer Games

“What?”

“Active ones. Ones that haven’t been found out. Ones that got off. Ones that have done their time. They’re not all locked up in prison, you know.”

“You want to catch one?”

She gives me a disgusted look. “I don’t have hero fantasies. I just want to meet one.”

“Why?”

“They wouldn’t be in a position to pass judgment, would they?” Pass judgment on what? She swivels around, as if looking for one now. “Where else would you go for a bit of appreciation if you were a killer? This podcast glorifies killers, and these people here—they’re fans. Wannabes. I could get up there and prove it to you.”

There’s no need. A man from table two runs up onto thestage and mimes being trapped in a glass box, to the room’s hooting. These are the people who would have cheered at a hanging two hundred years ago.

“Jonathan Litsz, the Down-to-Clown Drowner!”

The room bursts into laughter. They’re all in on about ten years’ worth of inside jokes. Dodi doesn’t laugh.

“Don’t you glorify murderers?” I ask. “You marinate your brain in true crime.”

She frowns and drags her elegant fingers down the stem of her glass, thinking. “Murder is a very difficult thing to do. Especially when it’s the right thing to do. It’s easier for people who are doing it for the wrong reasons.”

It’s chillingly philosophical in a room full of hooting deviants. Before I can ask her what she means, another man appears onstage. He brandishes an imaginary bag and rings a doorbell, and instantly, someone yells, “Scott Leipke, the Door Dash Slasher!”

“What made you think to bring me here?” she asks, voice low.

“This was the reason you wanted to come to Las Vegas.”

Dodi shakes her head, slowly. “I told you the reason why I needed to come to Las Vegas.” She looks me in the eye, like she’s willing me to recall her reason so she doesn’t have to repeat herself.

“Right. You need to dispose of a body.”

She tips her head to one side, sinuously, exposing her neck in that Dodi way. I search for a retort, but there’s nothing to work with. She’s far too serious.

“You promised you would help me out, if I ever needed.”

I wait for a sharp-toothed little smile, but it doesn’t come.

“Whose body?” I ask, probing for the other half of her joke. She’s silent, and it doesn’t make any sense, but—there’sno way she’s just making a joke. She licks her lips and presses them together. She jerks her chin at the room in general.

“My husband would have found this hysterical. He was completely morbid, too. Like you.”

I shrink, retract, and freeze at that word: “husband.”

“Your…husband.”

“You’ve never asked how he died. I wanted to tell you myself, in my own words, but I know you’ve already figured it out if you brought me here.”

I stare at her. I wonder if my face is as expressionless as hers.

“Tell me in your own words,” I say. I’m a hand puppet using someone else’s voice. “Tell me how he died.”

Is that gratitude in her eyes?

“It wasn’t natural causes,” she says quietly.

The hair on the back of my neck rises.

“Wasn’t an accident, either. His death was deliberate. Calculated. Premeditated.” Her face is savage as she says this. This is a woman who was wronged. This is a woman who had something stolen from her.

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