J. Kerley - The Killing Game

“ You hold your tongue, now —”

“ That dead-face kid may be some kind of mental wizard but that don’t make him right in the head, everyone in the county knows it too. You owe me five hundred bucks for the dog or I’m bringin’ the sheriff in .”

Gregory’s father had said nothing, but the bow disappeared. Gregory regained it two weeks later by telling his stepfather how much he loved hunting, especially with you and could we do it some more real soon? Please, Daddy ?

He grinned at the memory. Call the limpy old fucker Daddy and Gregory could get anything he wanted, kind of like pulling Ema’s strings.

Kayla Ballard shook her strawberry-blonde hair over her shoulders and patted her face with a bandana, the air in the university’s greenhouse dense with humidity. She studied rows of five-inch-tall cotton plants in individual planters, making notes on their size and health. Each plant was graded on eight points and turned into statistical models.

“You getting all this, Kayla?” fellow student Harold Barkley asked.

“My 4-H project was more involved,” Kayla answered, hefting a heavy tray of plants like it was a shoebox. “This is simple.”

Barkley shook his head as he studied columns of figures he’d spend all night crunching. “Your senior 4-H project took this much math?”

“It wasn’t the senior project, Harold, it was the junior one. The senior one was a lot more complicated.”

Barkley pretended to make sobbing noises. Kayla’s cell phone rang and she plucked it from the back pocket of her jeans. She noted the caller and the smile broadened on her face.

“Hi, Daddy.” She covered the phone with her hand. “Run along, Harold. I’ll catch you tomorrow.”

“In class it’s us who are trying to catch you , Ballard.”

Kayla grinned and returned to her cell phone. “Yep, I’m here in the greenhouse, Daddy. Guess what? I got voted president of the ag club and I wasn’t even running …”

The pair talked for ten minutes and would talk again near ten p.m., before Kayla fell into bed. Kayla missed her father terribly. They had been inseparable since her mother passed away when she was seven, the victim of a drunk driver.

“… all right, Daddy. I’m heading to the dorm to start calculating all this stuff. I love you.”

Harold Barkley walked toward the dorms. Kayla would beat him on her bike, riding the wide sidewalk that served both pedestrians and bikers.

She rounded a bend to find the same curious sight she’d noticed for the second day in a row: a man staring into the trees with binoculars. A birdwatcher, she figured, goofy-looking in that big floppy hat and sunglasses. Yesterday she couldn’t tell if it was a guy or girl until she got closer. A guy, could have been twenty, could have been fifty, from all she could see of him.

Had a game leg, too. Favored it and carried a cane, sticking it under his arm to scan the terrain. All that to watch birds, which meant a person with dedication. As Kayla closed in, the glasses seemed to turn her way, then drift back to the trees. Kayla felt a camaraderie with the birder, out practicing his hobby on a hot evening like this.

Good for you, buddy, she thought, smiling and waving as she sped past.

I looked at the classroom clock, almost nine already. How did the time fly by so fast? “OK, let’s wrap things up,” I said. “Questions?”

“Can we go back to the sociopath issue a bit?” Jason Kellogg said.

We’d spent two hours on securing crime scenes and its protocols – vital information, but nowhere near as tasty as discussing motivations of the Hillside Strangler or the Night Stalker. When you’ve eaten your cauliflower, you’ve earned a slice of pie.

“Sure,” I said. “Go ahead.”

“You mentioned the sociopath’s need for control. Why is control such a big deal?”

“Holliday has book learning in that area,” I said. “Let’s give her a shot.”

“Get it, girl,” Sanchez grinned. “School us.”

Holliday swallowed hard. She was in the front row and turned to address the bulk of the class. “Uh, well, many professionals think that by being controlling and manipulative, sociopaths reinforce their sense of superiority.”

Holliday looked at me. I said, “Keep going.”

“They’re in charge, ergo they’re the most powerful person in the relationship. Conversely, by being stupid enough to be manipulated, the other person is diminished.”

Jason Kellogg spoke up. “Why don’t people get tired of being jerked around?”

“The manipulation can be so subtle it’s not noticed, especially with intelligent socios. It’s an interesting problem to them – a project – pressing someone’s buttons without leaving fingerprints on the buttons.”

“Let me step in,” I said. “I watched a sociopath named Bobby Lee Crayline be hypnotized. He was dangerous to the extreme, guards in attendance. A guard ordered Crayline to sit for the procedure. He didn’t. When ordered to sit again, Crayline crouched slightly on bended knees. Without a second thought, the guard pushed the chair beneath Crayline’s butt and he sat.”

“So?” Pendel yawned. “The guard ordered the guy to sit and he sat.”

“It’s different,” Terrell Birdly said. “Crayline made the guard slide the chair under his ass.”

Pendel scowled. “Again, so what? The guy sat like he was told.”

A tittering, most of the class getting it. “You’re missing it, Wilbert,” Birdly said. “Crayline didn’t sit until the guard was manipulated into repositioning the chair.”

I nodded. “It was a tiny moment of meaningless control, but in Bobby Lee Crayline’s mind, it proved his superiority.”

Pendel shook his head and crossed his arms, refusing to believe it. Kellogg had his hand up. “You can hypnotize a sociopath?” he asked.

“Almost anyone is subject to hypnosis by a professional, though it’s easier to hypnotize subjects who want to be hypnotized or who have been prepared through a previous suggestion. Hypnosis isn’t something sociopaths generally like, because it’s putting someone else in control. Still, it can happen.” I shot a glance at the clock. “OK, good job. See you next time.”

Everyone started putting away their texts and electronic thingies except Holliday, who ambled towards me. She passed Pendel, who gave her a lascivious grin and whispered, “Gonna go suck teacher’s dick for an A?”

I heard every word; the poor geek couldn’t even whisper right.

“Grow up, Willy,” Holliday said, not looking at him. Two seconds later she was in front of me.

“You learned your lessons well, Wendy,” I said. “Good answers.”

“Thank you. Uh, listen Detective Ryder, I mean Carson, I was wondering if you might want to—”

“Well, well,” a big voice boomed. “I’d heard there was an encore performance.” Harry was leaning in the doorway, a Cheshire-cat grin on his face.

“I’ll get back to you,” Wendy said. “Next class maybe.” She scooted past Harry, saying hi. My partner spent a couple of self-indulgent seconds watching Holliday glide down the hall before turning to me.

“School’s still in session?”

I shrugged. “I figured I started it, so I should finish it. That’s the way it’s supposed to go, right?”

“I saw Shumuchuru in the property room laughing like he’d hit the daily double. He said you’d promised to take his next two all-night stakeouts if he let you finish teaching the course.”

Snitch . I said, “Um …”

“So how much of your return to the classroom is due to that pretty little lady who just walked away?”