Page 46 of Serial Killer Games

She’s a puzzle I’ve been assembling upside down, feeling pieces out, mashing them together, but now I’ve flipped one over and finally noticed a picture on the other side that puts them all together.

“Your husband was murdered.”

She stares at me with eyes harder than diamonds. “Yes.”

In my head a hand reaches out and twists a piece of string around a thumbtack under a photo of a man with blurry, indistinct features.

“And the killer?”

Again, she licks her lips. She’s tense. She’s a coil woundtight. Beyond her, the narrow-faced woman at the other table glances over again, her gaze sharp and probing.

“Prosecution couldn’t pull together a case against her.”

The string is pulled taut and the other end is tacked to a Post-it Note—The killer is a “she”—

I get a flash of a body falling off a balcony, here, in Las Vegas. The Paper Pusher is a “she.” It’s something Dodiknows. I make eye contact with the strange woman, and she turns away from me.

Dodi continues. “And now she’s in Las Vegas, living her best life, in the audience of a true crime podcast live event. What a twisted bitch, right?”

They’re not all locked up in prison, you know.Some of them are here tonight, to gloat. The hand scrawlsPaper Pusheron the Post-it.

Other scraps of paper materialize on the idea board. The bill to theMurderers at Workevent. The hotel’s packed conference calendar, with attendees from all over the continent. We’re in Las Vegas to dispose of a body. We’re here to take care of the woman who killed Dodi’s husband.

“Is the woman at the other table still staring at me?” Dodi asks.

“No.”

Dodi lets out a breath.

There are so many questions, but the one that comes out is, “You’re capable of murder?”

Relief washes over her face, relief that I’ve understood her, relief that I made that leap on my own.

“Yes. We all are, Jake.You’recapable of murder. You just need a big enough reason.”

She holds my gaze. I’m in Las Vegas with Dolores delaCruz at aMurderers at Workevent, drinking cocktails, while she asks me to be an accomplice in murder.

“What’s a reason big enough for murder?”

Her voice is low, and throaty, and raw. Brittle, and savage, and tender. Her voice is a lot of things. “Love.”

The word takes a second to curl up in my ear. It takes a second longer to realize she’s called me out. She’s seen a shadow inside me that I hadn’t even noticed yet, something dark and scary, that twitches from slumber and stretches its limbs and reveals itself to be several times bigger than I thought. She stares at me, and I stare back, and in this noisy, chaotic space, all I see is her. Her face is rimmed with cool light from the stage, ice blue flecks sparkling in her eyes and on her shiny painted lips. She doesn’t blink.

I would do anything for her, and she knows it.

“I understand,” I say. I understand everything. This twisted flirtation of ours, right from the start—it’s been a job interview while she sizes me up, tests my waters, checks to see if I know what I’m doing, and if I can be properly motivated. I’m a body disposal expert, and I’ve done the job for far lesser reasons. She’s wanted something from me all along, and I don’t mind. I really don’t. She doesn’t love me back, and I don’t even want her to. I just want her to look at me the way she did when I gave her the doll, when I staged our serial killer playdate, when I made plane tickets to Las Vegas magically appear. I want her to look at me like the boring temp identity is just a disguise, like there’s something more to me, something she and I have in common. A secret between the two of us.

“I understand,” I repeat.

She sags with relief when I say it. “I thought you would.” Her hand materializes over mine under the table, and she squeezes it fiercely, like she’s going to wring the blood from it.

“Meeting you was so unexpected, Jake. You knew exactly how to get through to me. You knew I needed to see you’re just as strange and twisted as I am. And I still don’t know what to make of you. Sometimes I still don’t feel ready—you’ve seen that. And I think I panic or something, and I get so angry. It feels disloyal to him, to move on, and to live my life. But…”

She swallows. Painfully, it seems.

“I’m ready now. It took me a long time to get to this point.” She presses her lips together. “You made this trip finally happen for me. You snapped your fingers and made it happen. It’s time. I’m ready for closure, Jake.”

“When?”

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