Excerpt: The Killing Game

If Eli DeMarco hadn’t been working with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation for twelve years, he would have been blinded by the nonstop flashing of digital cameras as he walked around the mutilated corpse that lay at his feet.
“Hey, boss,” Cameron said excitedly as he walked up next to Eli.
“Hey, Cam,” DeMarco replied, trying not to roll his eyes. He knew Cameron Gere had potential as an agent, and he was thrilled to have him on his team, but Eli just couldn’t stand rookies. They thought they knew everything just because they watched CSI. To Eli, a rookie was one thing: entertainment sent straight from the director. Cameron was no exception to this rule.
“Find anything yet?” Cameron asked eagerly, his dark blue eyes lighting up in anticipation.
“I just arrived two minutes ago,” Eli said bluntly. Sometimes the boy's stupidity could be overbearing.
“I know,” Cam replied, “But on TV, they just...”
“How many times do I have to tell you, Gere?” Eli scolded through a hiss. He didn’t want to attract the attention of the rest of the team. “This isn’t television. This is real life, with real people, with real problems. There is no one-step fix. There is no ‘get it right on the first try’. When something doesn’t work for us, we run it again. And we most certainly do not find something the moment we step onto the crime scene. You got that?”
“I copy, sir,” Cameron said, his eyes losing their enthusiasm. He looked almost like a whimpering puppy who had just been swatted with a newspaper.
“Good,” Eli said sharply. He hated having to reprimand Cameron because he was the one who would find things others might not, but sometimes it just had to be done.
Cameron returned to his work and Eli continued to walk around. He looked up from the ground just long enough to catch a glimpse of woman walking towards him. She had flowing, chocolate colored hair that made her skin look even paler than it was. Her chestnut eyes were soft, but careful to notice anything and everything. She was slender and her clothes hugged her body tightly, highlighting her voluptuous curves.
Eli smiled as she approached him. She wore a mysterious, hazy look upon her soft, delicate face. As she got closer, her blood red lips curled into a smile.
“Hey, Eli,” the woman said, her silky voice sending a familiar warmth through him.
“Natalie,” he replied, “What’s the damage?”
“Caucasian male, mid to late twenties,” she said, “It appears that the cause of death was a stab to the jugular. We won’t know for sure until Cavan gets here.”
Eli approached the dead body with ease, noticing that Cameron was hanging back, as usual.
Definitely not CSI, Eli thought to himself, chuckling as he knelt down next to the corpse. The poor man’s had was completely twisted around so that his face was planted into the ground. DeMarco could see the nasty gash in the right side of the man’s neck where a knife had ripped in and ended his life.
“Got an I.D.?” Eli asked as he gripped the sides of the man's head and began to turn it around.
“No,” Natalie said, “No driver's license, nothing.”
“Damn,” Eli said, but it wasn’t in response to Natalie’s news, it was about something completely different. Staring back at Eli was a mass of red tissues that overlapped and connected in a grotesque painting, almost like Picasso had come back to life and killed this man.
“What the hell?” Natalie gasped in horror, trying to hold in a gag as she looked up the contorted image.
Eli couldn't reply, he was too far in shock to realize that anyone else was speaking. He couldn’t believe what was right in front of him: the man’s face had been ripped off. The only remnants of a normal human face were the large grey eyes staring coldly back at him.
Cameron felt woozy as he approached the faceless corpse. He had never seen anything this sickening before. It was almost enough to make him quit GBI.
This is what you do, he reminded himself, If you can’t handle this, you can’t handle anything.
Eli finally looked up and saw Agent Gere standing over the corpse. “Good job,” he said breathlessly. DeMarco stood up and began to walk away from the others, towards the small patch of trees that sat near the body. He had to get away for just a few moments, it had all become a bit too much for him to handle.
The sunlight set the fresh drops of rain sitting of the grass on fire. It looked like someone had strung tiny Christmas lights along each individual blade. It was just like any other October morning, except for the fact that there was a faceless man lying in the grass only a few feet away from him.
As Eli approached the woods, he began to examine the texture of the trees. He noticed that in one of the closest trees, there was a strange, vertical line carved into the bark. DeMarco looked closely, wondering what this might be. He soon realized that a nearby tree had a similar mark, except this was shorter and horizontal. He went and looked at every tree and found that several trees had the strange markings, and all of these trees seemed to fall in a staggered row.
Suddenly, something clicked in Eli’s head. He was only looking at the components of the puzzle, almost like he was looking at the strokes in a painting rather than looking at the whole picture. If he was only looking at the individual pieces, what good would that do? He had to see the whole problem to figure out the solution. With an idea in tow, Eli took a few steps backwards so that he could see all of the trees with markings on them. At first, it seemed like the markings were in coherent, but he began stepping back and forth from left to right. After a few minutes of shuffling from side to side, DeMarco found what he was looking for.
“What is it?” Natalie asked as she stepped up beside him.
“Stand exactly where I am and look at the markings in the trees," Eli instructed proudly.
Natalie took his spot and looked into the trees. Her eyes went wide as she saw what he was talking about. Carved into the trees, with each letter stroke being a sperate marking, was the chilling phrase LET THE GAMES BEGIN.
“What the hell?” Natalie breathed. She couldn't believe what she was seeing.
“This psychopath wants to play games,” Eli concluded, “Well, then, let’s play.”
Natalie raised up her camera and took a picture as Eli walked back towards the body. As he approached the mutilated corpse, a lanky man with a rugged, uncut face approached the crime scene. His wavy, jet black hair had thin whisps of gray running through it, like small tendrils of smoke.
“Cavan,” Eli said, extending his hand.
“Elijah,” Cavan said, taking the agent’s hand and shaking it vigorously, “Good to see you.”
Eli felt better now that the medical examiner was here. Now he could start piecing together the puzzle.
“What have we got?” Cavan asked as he prepared to go to the body.
“Caucasian male, looks to be mid to late twenties, no identification,” Eli spouted, having gone through this more times than he could count, “Oh, and no face.”
Cavan recoiled a little as he saw what DeMarco was talking about, “I’ve seen some pretty nasty things, but I think this one tops the list.”
The medical examiner rubbed his gloved hand against his stubble as he knelt down next to the corpse. He sat there for a few moments just looking at the body.
“I’d like some answers today, Dr. Rousseau,” Eli snapped.
“Not a good morning, DeMarco?” Cavan chuckled as he pulled the tools from his bag that he would use to test the body.
Eli stopped for a moment, trying to remember how he had actually gotten here today. It was fuzzy, but little by little, the details returned to his mind.
+++
Rain splattered against Eli's face as he stood over the grave he had come to every day for four years. He wasn’t carrying an umbrella. He didn’t care that he was getting wet. He just wanted to see that grave again.
Sadly, he looked down at the tombstone, reading the inscription over and over, still unable to accept the terrible truth that accompanied it.
Arianna DeMarco. March 5th, 1965-October 3rd, 2005 Always alive in our memories.
A silent tear slipped from his eye as he remembered the night his wife was killed. They had gone out for a nice dinner for their son’s birthday and were walking down the sidewalk when someone leaned out a car window and shot Arianna in the head.
Her loss had devastated both Eli and Shane, but it had ultimately brought them closer together. They relied on each other now, they supported each other. They were more like friends than father and son, and Eli had no problem with that.
As the rain began to fall even harder, Eli made his way out of the cemetery. He hurried to his beat up car and revved the engine.
+++
“Eli?” Cavan said, noticing his friend’s sad, hazy gaze, “Eli!”
DeMarco snapped out of his comatose state and realized that he was still at the crime scene, standing over a man without a face.
“You got a time of death for me?” Eli asked distantly as he tried to pull himself together.
“I do,” Cavan said, standing up, “It seems that our John Doe has only been dead for eight hours.”
“Now what?” Cameron asked, having suddenly appeared at Cavan’s side.
“Now we figure out who this guy is,” Eli explained, “Meanwhile, Dr. Rousseau will be performing the autopsy.”
“Speaking of which, can I take the body?” Cavan asked.
“Go ahead,” Eli replied, still a bit distant.
“Thanks, I’ll have something for you soon.”
“You better,” Eli threatened, starting to get back to being himself, “I need that report as soon as possible.”
“Will do, DeMarco,” Cavan said as he motioned for his assistant to come help him get the body into the truck.
As Cavan loaded the body up and got ready to head back to headquarters, Eli approached Natalie.
“Did you find anything?” he asked softly.
“Nothing,” she replied matter of factly, “Whoever did this is good, too good.”
“Why would this psycho want to cut off his victim's face?” she asked half to herself.
“You ever seen The Silence of the Lambs?” DeMarco said with a chuckle.
Most people would have thought Eli was being sarcastic by the tone in his voice, but after seven years of working with him, Natalie knew that he was dead serious.
“Or maybe he’s just sick enough that he would do it just for the fun of it,” she suggested with a shiver.
“Alright,” Eli said decidedly, “It looks like there’s nothing here. Let’s head back to headquarters.”
“Alright,” she agreed as she turned back towards her car, “I’ll see you back at headquarters.”
“See you,” he said as he watched her go.
When everyone else had left, Eli walked back towards the trees and looked for the message again. Once again, the letters fell eerily into place, spelling out the same chilling message he had come across before.
“Let the games begin,” he whispered to himself.
+++
Light flooded into the headquarters as Natalie strode through the monstrous rotunda. She hurried onto a nearby elevator and started up for the third floor, where her and Eli's office was.
The elevator doors opened and she stepped out into the dim, gray hallway. Everything was clean and orderly, almost like a hospital. Natalie cringed at the thought as she walked down the hall. She had hated hospitals ever since she had been checked into a hospital as a child with a serious case of pneumonia. An attendant had failed to check up on her and she had gone into a fit of coughing. She could still remember the distortion as she faded in and out of consciousness.
Natalie shook her head vigorously, trying to expel the memory from her mind, but she knew that no matter how hard she tried to repress it, it would always remain with her. She hurried into the office she shared with Eli and sat down at her desk, which was positioned directly across from DeMarco’s. In the back of the room was Cameron’s small desk, which they had just put in there a week before.
She sat for a moment, thinking about the strange message carved into the trees.
“Let the games begin,” she whispered to herself. She knew that could only mean one thing: whoever this psycho was, they weren’t done killing yet. The thought that more people would die both terrified and amazed her.
Every time a person died, all Natalie could think about was the ripple effect that would happen when they alerted the family members of the victims. First it would be family, then friends, then business associates, and it wouldn’t stop. She often wondered if that wasn’t the reason that people murdered others, for that sense of control.
Her train of thought was broken, however, when the office door swung open and Jacob Adler entered the room. Jacob had just enough muscle that it had to be maintained. He had sharp, blond hair and vibrant green eyes. His face was rugged, but still expressed emotion more than his eyes did. He smiled his energetic, fun smile, the smile he always wore when he found something.
“What have you got, Adler?” Natalie asked, knowing that if he waited any longer to tell someone, he would likely explode.
“A date tonight,” he said excitedly.
“And?” Natalie asked, starting to feel a bit let down.
“That's it,” Adler said, knowing this wasn't what she was expecting, “Oh come on, Natalie, be happy for me.”
“I am,” she said with a chuckle, “Believe me, I am. I just thought you might have something.”
“I’m a forensic scientist,” he laughed, “Not a miracle worker. I haven’t even gotten anything yet.”
“I see,” she said, “Nothing from Cavan yet?”
“Nope,” he said, venturing further into the room, “You guys find anything at the crime scene?”
“We didn’t find anything,” she sighed in exasperation, “This guy’s good.”
“Really?” Adler said.
“Actually, there was something,” Natalie said as she pulled out her camera, “Look at this.”
Adler hurried around to her side of the desk and looked at the image she had displayed. She watched as his eyes raised up in a mixture of shock and confusion.
“Let the games begin?” he asked as he backed away from the camera.
“Yeah,” she said, putting the camera down, “Kind of freaky.”
“Kind of?” Adler chuckled nervously, “That’s your definition of ‘kind of’ freaky? Wow, you've got more problems than I thought!”
Natalie laughed as he sat down in the arm chair in the corner of the room. “What are you doing?” she asked, “Don’t you have work to do?”
“You brought me nothing from the crime scene, so...No.”
“Get back to the lab before DeMarco comes back and gives you hell about it,” she instructed.
“Alright,” he sighed, “I’ll see you later.”
“Goodbye, Adler,” Natalie called out as he slipped out the door. As the door slowly closed behind him, she wondered where Eli was. It wasn’t like him to be this far behind her.
“He’s just caught in traffic,” she said to herself as she fired up her computer, “That’s all.”