Do You Want To Play: A Detroit Police Procedural Romance Read online

  Do You Want To Play

  A Detroit Police Procedural Romance

  Charlotte Raine

  Do You Want To Play

  A Detroit Police Procedural Romance

  Charlotte Raine

  Copyright 2014 Charlotte Raine

  Arrabella Publishing

  All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in any form, in whole or in part (beyond the copying permitted by US Copyright Law, Section 107, "fair use" in teaching or research, Section 108, certain library copying, or in published media by reviewers in limited excerpts), without written permission from the author.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

  This ebook may not be resold or given away.

  Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Discover Other Titles by Charlotte Raine

  Teacher Beware

  A Grace Ellery Romantic Suspense Book 1

  ~~~

  Disturbed Mind

  A Grace Ellery Romantic Suspense Book 2

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  Midnight Sun

  A Grant & Daniels Romantic Suspense Trilogy Book 1

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  Devil’s Dawn

  A Grant & Daniels Romantic Suspense Trilogy Book 2

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  Contents

  Prologue

  Tobias

  Lauren

  Tobias

  Lauren

  Tobias

  Lauren

  Tobias

  Lauren

  Tobias

  Lauren

  Tobias

  Lauren

  Tobias

  Lauren

  Tobias

  Lauren

  Tobias

  Lauren

  Tobias

  Lauren

  Tobias

  Lauren

  Tobias

  Lauren

  Tobias

  Tobias

  Lauren

  Tobias

  Lauren

  Tobias

  Lauren

  Prologue

  THE KILLER STANDS on a ladder in the gymnasium of Osborn High School. The victim is a petite woman that barely reaches five feet tall and has chestnut brown hair that sways as she swings from the basketball hoop. Her wrists are tied so tightly to the hoop that the skin has been rubbed raw.

  The killer glances around the gymnasium. This is where the putrid filth of society begin to spread their disease. Children either become apex predators or prey. No one blends in during dodgeball. No one escapes judgment when they change in the locker room. This is Hell, painted red and white with the knight mascot encouraging the sports teams to fight. This is where children learn to obey and destroy each other for fun. There is only one way to survive in a Hell like this—become the devil.

  The white gloves the killer wears contrast with the black butterfly knife. It isn’t the most efficient knife for the job, but the killer isn’t doing this for efficiency’s sake. It isn’t a job; it is a hobby. It is a simple exercise in self-control, domination, and focused rage.

  The killer pulls the rag out of the woman’s mouth.

  “Why are you doing this?” the woman begs. “I’ll do anything you want. Just don’t do this. I have a boyfriend. Parents. You can’t do this.”

  “Pamela,” the killer says, setting the side of the knife against her cheek. A tear slides over it. “You don’t seem to get it. The point is that I can do this.”

  The knife slides down to her throat. The killer slices directly on the carotid artery. Blood cascades down her dress and drips down to the floor.

  ~~~~~

  Tobias

  DO YOU KNOW what the worst part about being a detective is? The public thinks that it’s being shot at, the fact that people consider all policemen corrupt, or the fact that witnesses tend to be liars or silent.

  But, no. The worst part is sitting at my desk, trying to solve a series of murders by some sociopath while the patrol officers laugh, joke, and generally spread their happiness to an unacceptable perimeter—specifically, my desk.

  Officer Richardson slams his mug down on my desk, splashing coffee over a few of my papers, and slaps me on the back.

  “Tobias,” he says. “Why don’t you take a break? You don’t want to be the next body in the morgue. It would reflect badly on the station.”

  I push a photograph toward Richardson that shows a woman tied up in a school gymnasium by her wrists with her throat slit. Blood trails down her pale pink dress. He grimaces. I show him another photograph, where a man has been shot five times—two in his chest, two on either side of his navel, and one in the center of the other bullet wounds. Richardson glances away. I push a third photograph toward him—a woman shot in the back of the head with a balloon tied to her wrist that has a skull and bones sketched onto it. Richardson scowls.

  “I’ve seen them, Tobias,” he says before I pick up the fourth photograph. “You don’t need to show me again.”

  “Yes, you’ve seen these photographs,” I tell him. “How can you see them and tell me to take a break? This guy…he is Ted Bundy crazy. He is out of his damn mind and he wants everyone to know it. He wants everyone to see how far his insanity goes.”

  “Ted Bundy eventually got caught,” Richardson says.

  “Yes, after killing thirty-five people,” I say. “Let’s try to keep this serial killer’s victims in the single digits.”

  Richardson shakes his head.

  “You’re going to die alone, Tobias,” he says. He picks up his coffee mug and begins to walk away.

  “That would be a blessing,” I yell over the patrol officers. He raises his mug in acknowledgement of my comment but continues to walk to his own desk. I glance down at the photographs again and try to make sense of them. Two photos show a Glock 19 was used, and the other one a knife. Why? The motives with serial killers tend to be relatively flimsy, but they always choose their victims or their methods for a specific reason. However, none of the victims knew each other and the method of murder varied. I need to find a connection or a motive, but it all seems to evade me.

  “Rodriguez!”

  I look over my shoulder to see my captain, Ray Stewart, gesturing for me to come into his office before he disappears back into it. I think about ignoring him because Richardson is one distraction too many today, but I figure I should at least try to keep my job.

  When I walk into Stewart’s office, the first thing I notice is that there is a woman that does not belong there. She’s tall for a woman, with light brown hair that reminds me of those lattes that one of my ex-girlfriends used to get, right down to the way the strands swirl up at the end. As I look at her, taking note of her black pants with a small white smudge on her thigh (Smoking ashes? A child with frosting on its fingers grabbing her leg?) and her lace blouse that seems a little too low-cut for a building full of men, she suddenly looks straight up at me. Her irises, a shade that straddles the line between black and dark brown, feel like they stab right through my chest. I have to stop myself from stepping back.

  “Rodriguez, this is Lauren Williams,” Stewart says, oblivious to anything as he reads through a report. “She’s a criminal profiler and your new partner. Try to play nice with her.”

  “I don’t need a new partner,” I say. Especially not one who relies on a soft science like psychology.

  “Well, that’s too bad. You can’t keep investigating alone. Miss Williams happens to have a specialty in serial killers,” Stewart says. “Why don’t you brief her on what you’ve uncovered?”

  I scowl and glance back at Lauren. He
r eyes hit me again. I shift my gaze to a plaque Stewart has on the wall, one that was awarded to him after a car drove into a restaurant and he pulled the bartender out from under the crushed hood. I would rather be the bartender with two broken legs than be forced to have a new partner that believes every new psychology study that pops up on the news.

  “There have been four murders,” I say. “Each victim has been murdered in a different way. We haven’t found a motive. That’s it.”

  “So, how do you know it’s the same guy killing these victims?” she asks.

  “He has a calling card,” I say. “In every murder, he writes PVP. Usually, he uses the victim’s blood.”

  “What does that mean?” she asks.

  “You’re the criminal profiler,” I say. “I don’t know. We have looked up names with those initials, corporations, organizations…none of them seem like they could be connected to a killer.”

  “Could I see the crime scene photos?” she asks. I send a scathing look to Stewart, but he’s still not paying attention. I lead Lauren to my desk and shove the photographs to her. She flips through them until she reaches the woman shot in the back of her head. Her forehead wrinkles and her mind seems to wander away from the mundane world of my desk.

  “What?” I ask. She is startled and blinks several times. She shows me the photograph of the woman. I stare at it. “Did you know her?”

  “No,” she says. “But I’ve seen this scene before.”

  I shake my head. “I’ve looked in the database. There hasn’t been a murder involving a balloon like that before.”

  “Not in real life,” she says. “I’ve seen it in a game.”

  “A game?” I repeat, skepticism thick in my voice.

  “It’s called Big Shots,” she says. “The whole point of the game is to shoot people who get in the way of your goal—and your goal is usually to steal money or get away with some crime—but when you kill someone, this…ummm…kind of thought-bubble pops up that has a skull and crossbones in it. This photograph was taken in a good neighborhood, right? Where you wouldn’t expect a murder?”

  I nod, an eyebrow raised. I don’t want to believe that this woman has cracked open a case that I’ve been working on for weeks, but if she’s right…it could lead to the killer.

  “That’s part of the game. The player has to avoid all of this fancy security equipment, and then the player…” She pauses. Her fingertips touch her lips and a smile curls up behind them. I know the look. It means that she has figured something out.

  “What?” I demand.

  “Player,” she repeats. “P-V-P. In the gaming world, it means player versus player. I think he’s taunting the police. He thinks that he and the police are playing a game. And he’s winning.”

  “Well, isn’t he a cocky son-of-a-bitch?” I say. I glance at the other photographs. “Do you think all of them could be from a video game?”

  She shrugs. “I’m not a huge video game player. I only knew about Big Shots because I had a boyfriend that played it.”

  “Does your boyfriend seem like the serial killer type?” I ask, not trying to hide my sarcasm.

  She doesn’t answer, picking up the photographs. “These people died because someone wanted to bring video games to life.”

  I watch her as she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. I shake my head.

  “The only reason motive matters is because it will lead us to the killer,” I say. “Everything should be easy to figure out from here. I mean, how many video games could there be that include the player murdering someone?”

  She looks up at me, her face betraying a sliver of pity. “You don’t play video games, do you?”

  ~~~~~

  Lauren

  I HAVE SPENT my life dedicated to researching serial killers. They are a fascinating breed of human—most of them don’t kill for the normal reasons—financial gain, love, or self-preservation—they kill because they enjoy it. They also don’t feel regret and tend to lack empathy. They essentially take the worst traits of humans and the worst traits of an animal to form something that strikes fear even into those who aren’t their prey.

  My new partner, Tobias, seems to lack an extraordinary amount of empathy and he is, in a word, an asshole. The only reason he isn’t considered a serial killer is because he’s watching video game previews with me instead of killing strangers.

  We have watched fourteen previews that have the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) rating of Mature or Adults Only. We have not seen a single video that includes a scene that is similar to the killer’s murders, so I have missed lunch in order to watch fourteen characters die gruesome, bloody deaths.

  A character holds an AK-47 and shoots into a crowd inside a mall. The bodies drop to the vinyl floors with horrifying realism.

  “This one is Warefare,” I say.

  “Let’s hope that this killer doesn’t copy that one,” Tobias says. He’s about three inches taller than me with dark hair that is disheveled as if he forgets to comb it every morning. His eyes are moss green and, quite honestly, the only part of him that seems vibrant.

  I type in the next video game in the search engine and find a link to a video.

  “This is the preview video for Primal Instinct,” I say. The video begins with two arms sticking out from the bottom of the screen, one fist holding a combat knife. Halfway through the video, it shows the player running through the school and grabbing rope from the janitor’s closet. I glance down at the photos on Tobias’ desk.

  “That could be this one,” I say, showing Tobias the photo of the woman strung up in the gym. “School setting, gym, knife…”

  “It could be,” he says. His lips are pressed together so hard that they are beginning to turn white. It’s amazing that his ego hasn’t gotten him punched in the face yet.

  An overweight officer with a handlebar mustache who looks like he could have stepped out of the ‘70s walks up to the two of us.

  “Richardson, do you ever actually work?” Tobias asks.

  “Are you guys watching cartoons about killing people?” Richardson asks. It’s reassuring to know that I’m not the only one who ignores Tobias’ snark.

  “Yep,” Tobias says. “You told me to take a break and I had no interest in watching porn, so I decided on watching murders instead.”

  “Funny,” Richardson says, shaking his head. “If you find your humor funny, you might also find this funny. There’s another body.”

  “Another victim of the PVP killer?” Tobias asks, already standing up. I pull on my coat. I’ve only been to a couple crime scenes in my life—always as an intern—but they were both simple shootings in which the killer was found within forty-eight hours.

  “Yeah,” he says. “And you’re going to want to hire a think tank for this one.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “The victim was drowned,” Richardson says. Tobias raises his eyebrow.

  “That happens all of the time,” Tobias says.

  “He wasn’t wearing any clothes.”

  “Oh.”

  He turns to me.

  “Are there porn video games where you kill people?” he asks.

  “No,” I say. “But there is a video game where you kill strippers and steal their clothes. It’s called Ryder’s Revenge.”

  “…Why?” he asks.

  “Because it has a whole storyline about this guy who gets robbed by a couple of strippers and he spends the whole game killing strippers in revenge.”

  “No, I mean why would anyone even play that game?” he asks. I shrug. He grabs his badge. “There is something wrong with the world.”

  I button up my coat. He shakes his head.

  “You’re not coming,” he says.

  “I’m your partner,” I say.

  “You’re a shrink,” he corrects. “And there is some likelihood that the killer will show up at the crime scene. So, you stay here and do your psychology thing while I go and gather evidence.”

  “You d
on’t like psychology,” I say.

  “It’s not that I don’t like it,” he says. “It’s that I put it in the same category as horoscopes and psychics. It’s all bullshit that people believe because they need to think that they understand everything that’s happening around them.”

  I force a smile. “Would you just take it more seriously if I could profile you correctly?”

  “No, but you can try if it makes you feel better,” he says. “But make it quick. There’s a naked, drowned body that I need to check out.”

  I tilt my head as I look at his eyes, which seem to have shadows trying to hide in his irises. But I can see them as if they couldn’t run away from me.

  “Your father was a policeman,” I say. “I’m guessing his father was a policeman too.”

  “You could have researched that,” he says.

  “You don’t like anything new and you do everything by the book.”

  “Anybody could figure that out about me,” he says. “Next you’re going to tell me that I investigate murders for a living.”

  I stare at the shadows in his eyes. “You’ve put up all these walls and hide inside your work so that you don’t have to look at your life and wonder if you’re happy.”

  He laughs, but the shadows in his eyes become more prominent than ever.

  “Well, you got the first two right,” he says. “Nice try.”

  He walks toward the doors of the police station. I follow him because I have no other choice. There’s a killer who is clearly begging for more attention. Who am I to deny him exactly what he wants?

  ~~~~~

  When people think of Detroit, they think of a city in ruins. Formerly, it was known as Motor City; now the unemployment rate is 14.5 percent, and about 70 percent of murders are unsolved. I moved here because of the latter statistic. It’s a place where serial killers could settle and kill victims without anyone realizing that there was a single murderer responsible for the deaths.

  Until now.

  The body is slumped in the James Scott Fountain in Belle Isle State Park. Belle Isle isn’t in the 10th precinct’s jurisdiction, but the 11th precinct contacted us because they know it was the PVP killer’s work.