“I couldn’t help it,” Delta said. “I’m so proud of you, I had to share it with somebody.”
Megan took the bag from Delta, set it on the counter, and laced her arms around Delta’s neck. Megan was the only woman Delta had ever been with who could put her arms completely around her neck without having to step on tip toe. “You’re such a sweetheart. Thank you.”
Pulling chilled glasses out of the freezer, Connie stepped out the door and onto the patio, where she popped one of the corks and tossed it for Cagney, her large Doberman, to chase after.
“Someone else is in an awfully good mood,” Delta noted, watching Connie carefully pour the champagne into the long, fluted glasses. “What’s up with her? You guys have a good day together?”
Gina shook her head as she emptied the chicken out into a bowl. “I wish. No, my little angel is in such a fine mood because she finally got beyond the first level of that damned computer game. You should see her. She’s hooked.”
“It doesn’t usually take her this long to finish, let alone get beyond the first stage, or level, or whatever-the-hell she calls it.” Delta winked at Connie through the sliding glass door.
“I know. That’s why she’s feeling a bit triumphant.” Rummaging through the grocery bag, Gina pulled out barbecue sauce and popped open the lid. “She spent the better part of the afternoon at that damned computer.”
“I suppose it’s better that she chase after warlocks and goblins than other women,” Megan offered.
Gina shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t suppose another woman would be able to keep her up as long as that game has. She didn’t come to bed until almost ten this morning.”
Delta peered through the glass door as Connie tossed the second cork for Cagney to chase. “I have to admit, Gina, that I haven’t seen her so involved in one of those silly games as she is with this one.”
“Maybe we could send her to Adventure Games Anonymous,” Megan offered. “You know, `Hi. My name is Connie, and I’m addicted to computer games.’”
Delta grinned. “I wouldn’t worry too much about it. Connie needs her own little world.”
Gina sighed heavily as she slapped barbecue sauce on the chicken. “It doesn’t usually bother me, but I’ve never seen a game get to her like this one. At one point, she slammed her fist on the desk and yelled at the monitor. It’s frustrating the hell out of her.”
“Good. Look at it this way: it’ll keep her honest. We certainly don’t want her thinking she’s a genius.” Delta winked at Gina, who smiled weakly at her and said, “I don’t know, Del. It feels as if there’s more to it.”
“Well, you would know. Five years is a long time to spend with a computer dork.” As everyone laughed, Delta looked up from the cutting board and studied Gina’s face. Delta always thought Gina was a handsome woman, and as she approached forty, her temples were the only part of her hair that was graying. Gina used to say she got ten gray hairs for every patient she failed to help. The gray gave her a distinguished appearance, and Delta always hoped that she would age as gracefully as Gina had.
“Want me to talk to her?”
The sliding glass door opened, and Connie leaned in the doorway. “You guys coming or not? I can’t drink all of this delicious champagne by myself.” Connie entered the house and placed her hands on her hips. “Okay, what’s going on here? No, wait,” she said, holding a hand up to stop them. “don’t tell me. You guys are talking about me spending too much time on the computer, aren’t you? I can tell by the look on my lovely gal’s face.” Sidling up to Gina, Connie nuzzled her neck.
“I was just mentioning how frustrated it’s made you,” Gina explained.
“You do seem to be a bit . . . entranced.” Delta looked over at the computer screen, which was on pause. The monitor displayed outstanding graphics that appeared almost three-dimensional. The still picture on the screen looked like an opening to a cave, and there were large green trees and shrubs all about. It could have been a snapshot, the graphics were so advanced. “Did you just now stop playing?”
Connie nodded. “About two minutes before you got here. I left it on because I wanted to show you.”
Delta glanced helplessly at Gina, who merely shrugged.
“Del, this is one of the toughest games I’ve ever played. Last night, there was this beast with about fifty heads. It had the body of a dog and the heads of snakes. I had to find a way to kill it before I could get to the next level. Before I knew it, it was eight in the morning, and I was still battling away.”
Her interest piqued, Delta started for the computer. “So, how’d you do it?”
“Oh, no,” Megan groaned, “not you, too.” Taking Gina’s arm, Megan headed for the porch.
In a flash, Connie was in front of Eddie II with a joystick poised in her hand. She reminded Delta of a little kid showing her best friend all of the toys she got for Christmas. “Here. You try.”
Delta took the joystick. After Connie released the pause button, Delta maneuvered the dwarf to a position where she could strike with the sword. As soon as the blade went through one of the heads of the beast, the dwarf was killed by a different head.
“What happened?” Delta asked.
Connie grinned. “That’s what I wanted to know. I stayed up all night trying to stab the right head.”
“And did you?”
Before Connie could reply, Gina and Megan entered the room and
swiftly pulled their partners away from the computer.
“This is family night, remember? Quality time, remember? No shop talk and absolutely no computers!”
For the remainder of the dinner, talk centered around a variety of issues, none of which had to do with police work or computer games.
Around ten o’clock, Delta and Megan decided it was time to go home.
“Next week’s family night is at Megan’s, right?”
Megan nodded. “I’ve reserved the hot tub, so bring your suits. Or don’t. It’s all up to you. I thought we could play dirty password among the bubbles.”
Gina grinned, as she slipped her hand through Connie’s. “Sounds like fun.”
“Absolutely decadent,” Connie mused. “See you tomorrow night, Del.”
“You bet.” Delta hooked her arm through Megan’s and started down the walk. Before they were to the car, Delta stopped and turned back toward the door, where Gina and Connie stood arm-in-arm.
“Hey, Connie, how exactly did you kill that beast?”
Connie smiled a knowing grin—a grin that said she had hooked Delta into the mysteries of the game.
“I poisoned it.”
“S1012, we have a 187 at 2121 Wharton Ave. See the lady.”
Delta and Jan exchanged glances. Another murder so soon after the last?
“This is S1012. Please 10-13.” Jan asked dispatch to advise them of the condition of the scene.
“S1012, you have a 219, suspect fled scene. Owner will meet you at front gate. Copy?”
Delta glanced at Jan, who spoke calmly into the mike. “Dispatch,
is that a two-one-niner?” Jan asked.
“10-4.”
“Multiple victims?”
“Negative.”
“10-4. Who’s back-up?”
“S1011 and R1921 will back-up and establish perimeter. Copy?”
“S1012, we copy. S1011, what’s your 20?” Jan asked, wanting to know where S1011 was and how long it would take them to arrive. S1011 immediately answered. “This is S1011. we’re four away. We have a 213 we’re just clearing. Over.”
“10-4.”
Suddenly, dispatch came back on. “S1012, the woman specifically requested a female officer.”
Jan smiled into the mike. “Then you requested the right unit, didn’t you?”
As the patrol unit zipped through the maze of streets, Jan cleared her throat and stared out the window. “You think it’s him, don’t you?”
Delta nodded, her stomach quietly convulsing. Since the call was a stabbing, it already fit his M.O. “It wouldn’t surprise me.”
“Could be gang-related.”
Delta nodded. “Perhaps.”
As they walked into the large, immaculate grounds of a Spanish-style home set far off the streets, a near hysterical woman in her mid50s jumped out from behind a limousine parked in the circular driveway. Frantically waving her arms in the air, and mascara running down her post-facelift cheeks, her eyes were wide with terror.
In the floodlights that brightened the entire front yard, Delta noticed a tall, rather husky man in his 30s leaning against the limo. When he saw Delta, he stood up straight and removed his hands from his pockets. He didn’t say a word but pointed to the woman, who was racing around the yard, grabbing her head and her chest and crying “Ohmygod, ohmygod, he’s . . . he’s . . . ”
Immediately, Jan moved over to the woman and tried to calm her, while keeping a wary eye on the man by the limo. As soon as Jan touched the woman’s arm, she sat down on the grass and sobbed.
“I’ll take her into the house and try to calm her down, Del,” Jan said, helping the woman up from the lawn.
Delta radioed they had arrived before slowly approaching the man.
“I’m Jordan Martin,” the man said in a deep baritone. “I’m a neighbor.”
Delta quickly sized him up. For all of his apparent macho nonchalance, the man appeared quite shaken and was trying to hide it, but Delta knew the signs. His face had a pallor to it, and the heavy line of perspiration dotting his upper lip indicated the nervousness he was feeling.
“Can I see some ID?” Delta asked, not taking her eyes off his hands.
Jordan Martin reached into his back pocket and pulled out an old brown leather billfold. As he handed Delta his driver’s license, he told her that he lived behind the old house.
“I came running as soon as I heard Mrs. Griffin scream. My wife will tell you as much.”
Keeping one eye trained on Mr. Martin, Delta looked at his driver’s license and saw that he was, in fact, Jordan Martin who resided in the house behind the property. This didn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, make him innocent in her eyes. It simply meant he was who he said he was.
Handing his license back, Delta’s surveyed the property. “Where’s the body?”
Jordan’s head jerked backwards. “The other side of the car. Hope you haven’t had dinner recently. It’s a pretty gruesome sight.”
“Well, Mr. Martin, my partner and I would appreciate it if you would have a seat on the porch over there until we can take a look around and ask you a few questions.”
“I’m not in any trouble, am I?”
Delta straightened up to her full height. He was taller than her by a few inches. “That depends. You just stay there while I take a look around.” Delta watched as Jordan lumbered over to the porch and sat down. She then rounded the front bumper of the black limo.
As she came around the driver’s side of the bumper, Delta first saw two shiny black shoes lying heel up. For a moment, the universal clock rewound itself to that split second in time when she came around the bumper of her patrol car to find Miles’s bullet-ridden body bleeding on the pavement.
So intense was the memory, so deep was the wound, that Delta had to steady herself against the limo before continuing.
What she saw when she came to the front of the limo brought the sour taste of bile to her throat. Lying face down on the pavement, with his head split in two from the back, was someone dressed in a chauffeur’s uniform. His head looked like two halves of a watermelon, as bits of gray matter slowly oozed down either side. The grotesque nature of his gaping wound wasn’t the sole reason vomit threatened to escape Delta’s stomach. The slimy brains glistening under the porch lights seemed almost surreal, and the amount of blood was too vast to comprehend. What was hardest for her to focus on was that his arms had no hands.
His handless arms ended at a puddle of quickly congealing blood and were outstretched, as if he had tried to crawl away from his assailant.
“Oh shit,” Delta muttered, moving to the front of the limo and wiping her mouth with her handkerchief.
“Pretty nasty stuff, huh?” came Jordan’s deep voice from the porch.
Trying to keep her stomach from flying out of her mouth, Delta inhaled slowly and deeply before walking over to question Mr. Martin, who, as she soon discovered, neither heard nor saw anything. He had simply come running to the older woman’s screams.
When Jan and Mrs. Griffin came back from the house, Delta was covering the body with a sheet from the back of her unit.
“Del, she says she’d like to stay out here with you and Mr. Martin, if you don’t mind.”
Delta looked over at the petrified older woman. “No problem. Mr. Martin, would you mind sitting on the other side of the porch from Mrs. Griffin until the detectives arrive? They’re going to need separate statements from both of you.”
“Why can’t I talk to you ladies?” Mrs. Griffin asked, eyes wide with terror. She reminded Delta of a fawn in the middle of the road about to be hit.
“Don’t you worry about a thing, Mrs. Griffin. My partner and I are just going to make sure that none of the evidence is destroyed.”
Mrs. Griffin rubbed her eyes. “Evidence? What’s happening to the world?” Shuffling over to one of the porch chairs, Mrs. Griffin sat down.