Ready. Set. Psycho.

Chapter Twenty-One: Justin

           

Justin sat overlooking his laptop. He jumped back and forth between three different tabs on his browser — one for porn, one for goregoregore.com, and another showing a video feed for the high rise on 26th Street. It was dark, and he could not see much. He went back to his porn, then back to the video feed, moving his cursor over the bottom of the video and rewinding.

He pulled the video back to midday. He stopped when he saw Solomon in his taupe suit approach the building and go inside. Justin shook his head. "Why did you leave?" he asked. "Why the fuck did you leave?"

He shook his head and watched the video. Solomon came out, walked around, just off camera, and then came back and sat down and picked up his phone. "Did you get a call or make a call?" Justin asked. "Why did you just leave?"

Justin watched Solomon walk off camera and not return. He was furious. "What did you see? Why didn't you go in?"

He stood up and paced the large, sparsely decorated room. It was bare except for a chair and a desk with his computer on it. He slept in a sleeping bag on the ground. There was plenty of room for him to pace and to think. "Why?" he asked, hitting himself on the head. "Why, why, why?"

He shook his head and went to his computer. He scrolled through a few porn sites, watching the loudest and most violent movies he could. He dropped his pants but could not get an erection, so he left the porn sites and went to a few gore sites instead. Those got him going. He blasted death metal into his earphones and masturbated to a disappointing finish before bringing up a game of online poker. He opened six games simultaneously, and after losing three or four hands in a row, he decided he was on tilt and stopped playing. "Oh," he said. "I get it. You're not playing my game anymore. Think we can play your game instead? Think you know my game? Think you know what is happening? Not fucking likely, Detective Roud."

He took off his pants completely and walked around his apartment naked. He went to a bucket of phones in one corner and pulled a new one out of its wrapper, activating it and putting in a new SIM card. He went to his front door, opened it, realized he was naked, and went back to get dressed. Dressed, he left his apartment wearing a fake hipster moustache and thought about how much he would like to kill every hipster he met for the next thirty years, and maybe that would be his next engagement once Sol was dead.

He rode the subway to Queen's and found a residential street where kids were playing stickball. He felt like he had gone back in time. Who played stickball? He was surprised to see that was still a thing, especially since gentrification guaranteed that these kids' parents had money. Poor people did not live in New York anymore. There was poverty, yes, but that was always a relative thing. As far as you could go in any direction, if you could afford to live in New York for a year, you were wealthier by far than any average American.

He found a park and waited. He sat with his hands in his pockets playing with his pocketknife, opening it and closing it. The sun set, hidden by rows and rows of buildings. He did not see it dip below the horizon, but he did see the streetlamps light up slowly but surely, and soon enough the natural light had faded. He stood and he walked in no particular direction until the street started to come alive again with people returning from work, popping up out of subway exits with bags full of food to bring home to family.

Justin continued walking as the darkness of the sky descended and the brightness of artificial lights — streetlamps, neon signs, apartments — claimed just a little bit of that darkness's territory. It was brighter at 9:00 p.m. than it was at dusk in New York. Always would be, Justin thought. So he waited until that tide turned once more, until 2:00 a.m., when the apartment lights would dim and the stores and bars started to close and turn off their lights. Those brief hours where darkness almost won out against the city.

Justin found his victim. He could barely make out what he was wearing or what he looked like, but he precisely fit the bill: smallish, alone, walking slightly askew and likely drunk enough to stumble in a light breeze. He followed off the main strip and onto the side streets once more, where either the man lived or he was visiting someone for the night. But either way, it was the man's last stop.

Justin played with his knife in his pocket, opening it and closing it, careful not to cut his fingers on the blade. He sped up and was set to pass the man. As he pulled even with his victim, he pulled his hand from his pocket, jabbed the knife into his victim's back, stumbled, pushed, and then righted himself, pulling the man back up. "Sorry," Justin said.

"No worries," the man replied.

Justin kept walking. He took the knife out of his pocket and looked at it — still closed, but that was not the point. It could have been open and, if it was, the man would be dead. "It's still that fucking easy," he said to himself. "It will always be that fucking easy to kill. Anytime I need it."

He picked up the burner phone from his pocket, and he remembered when he first called Solomon in the middle on the night. It was just after killing Francine.

He woke Solomon at two thirty in the morning to the sound of his phone ringing. Solomon answered with a grunt.

"I just wanted to hear your voice," Justin had said.

"Roger?"

"No," Justin replied. "Psycho."

Solomon pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at the number. He grabbed a pen and paper nearby and wrote it down. "So when can we meet?"

"Soon enough."

Solomon started getting dressed. "Tonight?"

"No. I'm busy."

"I bet."

"You're getting close. In fact, I think you'll figure out where I am soon. More importantly, you'll figure out where she is."

"Probably."

"It means I need to kill again."

"Think so?"

"Well, this is just a game. Detective, we are just playing a game. You and me. Except I'm playing chess, and you're playing checkers. You're not on my level. I'm out to kill someone, and you are out to stop me. It's that simple. And if you are getting closer, I either stop or I kill sooner, before you have the chance."

"But you can't stop, can you?"

"No, Detective. I can, I assure you. But you need to beat me. Or you need to admit that you will never beat me."

Solomon said nothing.

"Just say that I won. Say that you can't catch me. Give up. You're a rich kid. You probably grew up playing chess. Know what chess players say when they know they are beat? When checkmate is inevitable? I have checkmate. I'm going to kill again, and you can't stop me unless you throw down your king and resign."

"I'm not going to give up."

"Admit checkmate. Resign."

"I don't see it that way."

"Fine. Then the game continues. Ready. Set. Go!"

Justin hung up as Solomon started to respond.