Текст книги "Crime after Crime"

Автор книги: Tara W. Kent

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 1 (всего у книги 8 страниц)

Crime After Crime

Alexander Kane Files: Book One

TARA W. KENT

Copyright © 2014

All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty Two

Chapter Twenty Three

Prologue

              Frank Sinatra crooned from every corner of the darkened room as Virginia stumbled frantically in search of an exit.  Somewhere beneath the music, she could feel the soft, warm breath of the approaching stranger in the night.

              Virginia saw a thin stream of light, dust particles dancing across its rays and landing on a nearby poker table.  She recognized from the placement of the thin, barred window that she must be below street level.  But at least she had found a way out.

              She screamed as the stranger’s sword plunged through the open slit in the back of her dress and twisted inside of her.  She clutched the table as she tried to break her fall to the ground.  Her hand grazed by several neat piles of poker chips, scattering them on the parquet floor beneath her.  They slid in the quickly thickening pool of her blood as she tried to push herself to her feet, bringing her back to the ground with a thud.  This was not her winning hand.

              She felt his presence as he placed one foot on either side of her and loosened his knees, kneeling closer to his prey.

              “Please, please no.  I have money.  I’ll give you money.  I’ll give you anything you want.  Just…please.”  Her voice grew weak as she bled out.

              He stroked the blonde curls of her blood-stained hair.  She heard his voice, barely a whisper.  “I know you will.”

              Virginia breathed hard and tried to push herself up to crawl away.  His gloved hand came down on her, holding her by the top of her head as he forced his other hand through the wound in her back.  She let out a horrifying scream, nearly inhuman, muffled by the deafening music.

              Her lifeless body fell to the floor.  The stranger removed the attaché case from his shoulder and placed it on the poker table, calmly unclasping it before adding to its contents one broken heart.  He replaced the bag on his shoulder, slid his sword into its cane handle, and adjusted his gloves.

              With the flick of one wrist, a ruddy playing card, lightly foxed around the edges, shot from his sleeve and floated through the rays of dust to land square on the back of Virginia’s neck.  From his resting place, the unenthused King of Spades gazed down at the heartless gape in Virginia’s back.  He had won the hand, but he knew there would be several more to play before he took the pot.

 

Chapter One

              Kane found himself in the same familiar situation he’d encountered numerous times before, trying to maintain a façade of steely resolve, struggling not to squint as the bright light left him blind to all but that which was right in front of him.  He knew there must be countless others in the room, watching, studying his every move to see what made him tick.  Still, his focus remained on the torturous man seated across from him.

              Brice Belmont adjusted his silk bowtie, the corners of his mouth turned up in a grin as he readied himself to interrogate his favorite plaything.

              “Are you ready to begin, Mr. Kane?”

              Kane tried to smile playfully, though it came off as more of a grimace.  “You should know me better by now, Belmont.  I’m always ready.”

              He truthfully wasn’t, but he didn’t have much time.  Belmont was set to begin in three, two….

              Camera One rolled closer for a better view as applause deafened the room.  Brice turned to meet its lens as the audience settled into an attentive hush.  Kane sat up in his seat, his plastic smile fixed on his host.

              “Good evening!  I’m Brice B. Belmont, welcoming you back to New York’s Newest Scoops with tonight’s guest, three-time Emmy winner Alexander Kane!”

Alex waved to the applauding audience, pretending to be flattered by their dull routine.  “Thank you, thank you all.  It’s a sincere pleasure to be here tonight.”

“So, Alex, tell us what’s next for you!  You’ve recently announced your departure from Time After Time after six award-winning seasons.  I think the question on everyone’s mind is: ‘What now?’”

              Alex wondered the same thing, but he couldn’t hesitate on the air.  Especially not with Belmont hamming it up, bubbling over as if he’d never landed a better story than the series retirement of an over-the-hill soap actor.  The thirty-something gritted his teeth, searching for what to say.  I honestly don’t know, Brice, he mused.  The thought of working another season with my ex-wife was making me sick to my stomach, so knowing my luck, I’ll probably get remarried.

              “Well, for starters, I’m going to take some time off to really think about what the future might hold for me.  Take a sabbatical, if you will.”  He smiled for the cameras.  Played the part.

              “Does the fact that your ex-wife remains on Time After Time have anything to do with your decision to leave the show?”

              Oh, he is pressing now.  Alex stole a slight glance at his agent, Chuck Fields, who stood off-stage and gave a casual shrug.  Chuck didn’t know what to say, either.  He was supposed to keep Alex’s ex-wife from coming up in the interview, and he knew he’d be in the doghouse.  After six months of separation, Charlene was still a sore subject for Alex.  Every time he heard her name, her voice echoed in his mind: “I slept with David.”

              David, your best friend for eight years.  David, our producer.  David, whose marriage I’m willing to throw down the drain along with our own.

Tied up in his interview, Alex had to wave it all off for the time being.

“No no, Brice, nothing of the sort.  Charlene and I may have parted ways on a personal level, but I will always respect her career.”

Alex smiled, though this time he was less disingenuous. Nailed it.  That’s exactly what you’re supposed to say.  Not that she’s a vapid, career-sucking leech.  They’ll figure that out on their own.

Alex poised his way through the rest of the interview without a hitch, crowd-pleaser that he was.  When it was all said and done, Chuck ran up and wrapped his arms around Alex’s tightening shoulders.  He knew Alex wasn’t exactly the hugging type, but he couldn’t resist.  Like Alex, the balding, chubby, middle-aged man thought he had a clear enough sense of who he was that he wasn’t about to change his ways for anyone.

“Alex, baby!  That was perfect!  I dunno what happened, that creep askin’ you about Charlene and all, but you schmoozed him like a pro!”  Chuck had moved into a loft on Central Park West the first week he landed Alex as a client, yet the rough accent of southeast Brooklyn remained glued to his voice.

“Gee Chuck, thanks.  After that third Emmy, I’d sure hope someone might consider me a pro.”  Sarcasm dripped from his voice.  Chuck ignored it completely.

“Listen, kid.  Let’s walk and talk.”  Chuck took Alex by the shoulder and guided him away from prying ears.  “You know how you like them shows with the cops and all that?  The cop shows?  Well, guess which lovable lug went and bagged you an audition on the hottest new series by Derek Fox, New York Vendetta.”

Alex stopped dead in his tracks.  He’d never met Derek Fox, but just about everyone who was anyone had worked on at least one of the dozens of shows he’d directed and produced.

“You got me an audition.  An audit—” Alex spun on his heel, excited, clasping Chuck’s arms.  “You got me an audition?!”

Chuck laughed.  Alex was the only client of his that could get away with that sort of thinly veiled insult.

“Man, I could kiss you!”  Alex squeezed Chuck’s cheeks, very nearly kissing him.  He caught himself and spun away, triumphantly marching down the hall and gesturing wildly with his hands as if he were describing the biggest wonder in the world.  “I’ve wanted to be on a cop show my whole life!  Something like CSI or NCIS or SVU or, or, or…or anything.  Chucky, Chucky my friend…you are fantastic!”

Chuck stood, flabbergasted, in the hallway as Alex strolled off toward the parking lot, grinning like a drunken idiot.  Chuck scratched his head and adjusted his comb-over, muttering to himself.

“Can’t believe the rat bastard brought up Charlene.  But at least he didn’t mention the pool.”

Chapter Two

              Detective Dick Trilby adjusted his outdated, crumpled fedora to hide a rogue strand of sweat-soaked hair.  He lit a cigarette and took a deep puff before coughing so heavily he blew it from between his fingers.  He scrambled to pick it up before it burned his classic mahogany desk.  Collecting his cool, he leaned back and took another drag, managing to release only a slight wheeze this time around.

              “Farrow, get in here!”  He hoarsely yelled for his assistant, whose heels tapped lightly on the floor as she pattered energetically into the room.

              “Yes, Detective Trilby?”  Rena Farrow was a fair-faced but buxom redhead.  A hard worker with a keen wit, she possessed a host of well-rounded qualities.  Nevertheless, she’d been hired for the well-rounded qualities beneath her blouse.

              “Captain Richards needs a write-up on the body they hauled in this morning.  I wanted to go over our talk with the medical examiner, see if you have any insights.”  He swept his arm across the room as he motioned to the chair on the other side of the desk.  “Please, have a seat.”

              Rena smoothed the back of her skirt as she sat across from Trilby.

              “Well, boss, the M.E. said there were signs of a struggle, ruling out any potential connection between the victim and her killer. But….”  She trailed off, uncertain what to say next.

              Trilby made a rolling motion with his hand, a sign for her to keep going.

              “Perhaps you had another thought?”

              “Oh!  That’s right.  I had another thought.  Witnesses stated that she was last seen entering her apartment around sundown, yet her body was discovered several blocks away, and her body temperature indicates she was killed only four hours after she was seen.  So the only reasonable explanation is that she left with the guy.  I wouldn’t let a strange man into my home, much less leave with someone I didn’t know.”

              Trilby smiled.  “Well, good to know you’ve got sensible instincts when it comes to men.  Is there anything you want to add?”

              “No,” said Rena coyly.  “Except that if I had sensible instincts when it came to men, I would’ve filed for reassignment the day I met you.”

              “Very good, Farrow.”  Trilby buttoned his jacket as he stood.  He fumbled a bit on the second button, unable to find the slit where it went.  Rena bit her lip.

              “Um.  You’ve got, uh….”

              She pointed to his jacket.  He looked down, seeing that he had done up the wrong button.  He laughed nervously as he unbuttoned and did it the right way.

              “As I was saying, Farrow, you’ve got a good eye for the details on this case.  But you’re not asking all of the right questions.”  Trilby went to the window, lifting up one of the blinds.  He flinched backward, caught by surprise by the brightness outside.  He turned back to Rena, pacing behind his desk.  “You’ve got a solid point that she must have left with the killer.  And it’s not unreasonable that she would have put up a fight once she realized that her life was at stake.  But why would she need to struggle if the kill was premeditated?  Why would the killer give her that chance?”

              Rena furrowed her brow.  “Well, obviously, the kill wasn’t premeditated.  Whoever killed her, wherever they went, the killer didn’t know any better than she did what was going to happen last night.  That’s why he picked such a sloppy dumping site, right there in the middle of the parking garage on East 51st and Lex.  He probably left her in a hurry.”

              Trilby spun, trying to snap his fingers but producing no sound.  After failing a couple more times, he simply pointed dramatically at her.  “That’s where you’re wrong.  Her body was left with her arms folded over her chest, and he managed to avoid the cameras in the garage.  That’s not something someone does when they’re in a hurry.  But more importantly, there’s the lack of fingerprints, hairs, or any other evidence that might provide us with some clue of who the killer was.  He couldn’t have spent much time covering his traces, given the body was still soaked in blood.  Which means….”

              Rena’s eyes widened.  “Which means that there were no traces to clean up in the first place.”

              “Exactly,” said Trilby, taking another belabored puff from his cigarette.  “The killer definitely knew what he was doing, and…and….”  He sneezed from the lingering smoke and wiped his nose with the back of his hand as he tried to wave the smoke away from his immediate area.  He sniffed loudly and swallowed before finishing his thought.  “And he knew her well enough that she was willing to leave quietly with him, presumably from a back exit, since the doorman never saw her leave.  So the struggle implies that at some point, when he decided it was time to go in for the kill, she knew.  He didn’t sneak up on her when he had the opportunity to do so; if he had, there would be no chance for her to struggle, seeing as she was stabbed from behind.  Instead, he must have told her that she was going to die!”

              Trilby smiled, pleased with himself.  Rena tilted her head to the side, pouting her lips.

              “I don’t see the point.”

              Trilby crossed to the front of his desk, leaning against the edge as he bent forward, closer to Rena.

              “The point is, he wanted her to know.  It wasn’t enough to kill her: he wanted to feel it.  He wanted to feel the power, the control he had over her in her final moments.  Whatever it was, he had some sort of personal motivation for her killing.  He wasn’t just taking a life; he was taking out a vendetta.”

              The pair covered their ears at the screech of feedback as director and producer Derek Fox held down the button on his megaphone.

              “Cut!”

              Fox hopped down from his director’s chair and flipped back his long hair.  He greeted the duo with a winning smile as he approached the set.  His gawky assistant, Megan, followed silently behind.

              “Rena, excellent job.  I knew the second you sent in your headshots that you had the part, and you haven’t let me down once.”  Rena—character actress Jenna Monroe—blushed at the young director’s praise.

“What about me?”  Fox turned his gaze toward Jenna’s scene partner, draped somewhat in shadow as the electric crew dismantled the light on the other side of the fake office window.

“Ah, yes.  Trilby.”  Alex removed his fedora and straightened his hair with his fingers.  “Well, quite frankly, it’s your lucky day.”

Alex breathed a sigh of relief.  Used to the open stage setup of Time After Time, he’d been nervous about having the camera and lights so close to him.  He had worried he might have stumbled in parts of his scene.  He stuck out his hand to his new director.  “Thanks, Derek.  I won’t let you down.”

Fox looked at the outstretched hand with bemused curiosity.  “What?  Oh, no, you don’t have the part.  Why would you think that you did?  You were terrible.  You flopped your way through the easiest scene in the script, your blocking was uninspired, you waved your hands around like you were in a middle school drama production, and thanks to you sweating like a pig, we’re probably going to have to replace your costume.  I wouldn’t want you as an extra on my set, much less as a lead.  Frankly, Kane, you’re thirty-four years old.  With eight years on me, I’d expect you to know this game a little better.”

Alex’s hand dropped.  He gritted his teeth.  “You just said it was my lucky day.”

“It most certainly is.  One word from me and you’d never work again.  Luckily, I saw your interview last night.  Thanks to you, I’m in a good mood.  After all, I won the pool.”

Megan snickered.  Alex squinted.  “What pool?”

Fox, Megan, and Jenna all shared a laugh.

“Oh, you poor thing.”  Jenna slapped Alex on the shoulder.

“The pool to see when you’d throw in the towel and finally give up on that wretched slice of melodrama you called a show,” said Fox.  “Everyone in the industry saw it coming when you separated from your wife.  Obviously she had a good run left in her, given her looks and everything.  But you?  You were getting stale long before the divorce.  I figured you knew, which is why I had you done at the end of the season.  Megan here thought you’d overstay for another six years, assuming the show even went that long.”

His cheeks growing red, Alex shook indignantly.

“And what about her?” he asked, pointing at Jenna.  “She’s been cast for two weeks.  I’ve been here one day, and I had to feed her a line.  What, is she just here to be a pretty face?”

Fox shrugged as if the answer was obvious.  “Duh.”

Alex bit the inside of his lip.  He didn’t know what to say.  Fox chuckled slightly and clapped Alex on the shoulder.

“Calm down, Kane.  Look, there’s no shame in knowing when to bow out.  It’s like basketball—sometimes you have to spend some time in the D-league before you can rejoin the team.  I’ve got a new show coming out every half-season.  Maybe five or six years from now, when New York Vendetta has a couple of spin-offs, you’ll be ready.  We might even write in an alien or an evil twin, or whatever the hell it is you soap actors love so much.  But right now, I’m having trouble really buying you as an actor who’s ready to do a one-camera show.  How is America going to buy you as a hard-boiled detective?  You’re too soft for all that.”

Throwing one last sympathetic smile at Alex, who felt completely belittled at having to receive sympathy at all, Fox turned and walked off with Jenna.  Alex went to slump against the desk, but fell on his rear as two set grips moved it away.  Megan helped him up.  She straightened his coat, but he shrugged her arms away.  She looked down.

“Um, for what it’s worth, sir, I happen to be a big fan of yours.  I didn’t put you later in the pool because I thought you’d overstay your welcome or anything.  I really wanted you to finish the show.”

Alex hung his fedora on a coatrack from the office set as an intern from the art department carried it past.

“Thanks, I guess.  I just wish I’d known about the pool.  I might have bet against myself.”  He laughed.  “Then again, maybe not.  This industry’s enough of a gamble as it is.”

His eyes widened as a thought struck him.  His forehead tightened; one could practically see his mind racing.  Megan grew concerned.

“Mr. Kane, are you okay?  You’re not having a stroke, are you?  Do you need to go to the hospital?”

“No, I have a better idea,” Alex said.  “I need to go see my bookie.”

Chapter Three

Kimberly Daniels wondered at the deafening sound as she approached the old casino off of 36th Street, near Avenue of the Americas.  An unassuming place for this sort of dive, the location might have gone completely unnoticed if not for the roaring music that had been aggravating passers-by all morning.

Kim wasn’t the first at NYPD to hear of the disturbance, the music having been reported primarily as an irritation rather than as the source of any suspicious activity.  She and the rest of the homicide division weren’t called to the scene until a would-be looter of the clearly abandoned dive called in to report the blood leaking from under the doorway.

Kim took the rubber gloves from her back pocket, pulling them on before removing her gun from its holster as she descended the stairs from the sidewalk down to the narrow alley.  Her partner, Jacob Newport, lightly grazed the stone walls with his own gloved hand as they walked single-file down a passageway much too narrow for them to navigate side-by-side.

“Fascinating,” mused Jacob.  “This passage is an anomaly in New York City planning.  Most establishments below street level should be visible from the sidewalk.  It’s rare for such a walkway to be hidden like this.  Even more rare that we should be able to hear the music from the street.”

Kim said nothing.  She generally had little to add when Jacob went on rants like this.  If it wasn’t pertinent to the case, she would just shut him up.  But without even knowing if there was a case yet, she found it best to let him talk.  He was known for solving cases through his attention to rudimentary detail, and she wasn’t going to stand in the way of his work.  Especially not with the incredibly high record of unsolved cases they’d been struggling with for the past couple of months.

As they rounded a corner in the passageway, Kim saw why their department had been called so quickly.  They sure as hell didn’t need a beat cop to tell them this was a murder scene.  Kim quickly pulled out her radio and called up to the team she had waiting street-side.

“Langley, get your field kit prepped.  You also might want to call in the rest of your team.  You won’t need to do prelims on this one; it’s definitely a four-man workload at least.”

Maria Langley sighed as she radioed back.

“You sure, Daniels?  My brown ass is sittin’ pretty up here.  I was thinking I might just start standing next to this fly-ass car of yours every day, make the force look good.”

Kim smiled.  “I don’t see how an M.E. standing around doing nothing makes us look too productive.”

“I didn’t say nothing ‘bout productive, baby.  I said I’d make this look good.  Somethin’ you wouldn’t know about with them rugged-ass jeans you’re always wearing.”  Maria laughed.  “I swear, you’d think a babe with a low-rider like this one might have a waistline to match.  At least with my big ass standin’ here, no one can see the four doors you got on this thing.”

Jacob pulled out his own radio, staring Kim right in the eyes as he clicked in.

“I’d like to remind you two there’s a male officer here.  One who does not keenly enjoy the sight nor smell of blood, and who would like to get this scene wrapped up quickly.  Furthermore, I would opine that Detective Daniels and her gluteal region cannot be adequately compared to a woman of Latin-American descent, as the commonalities of the race would suggest—”

“Shut up, Newport!  Don’t make me come down there and whoop your skinny white boy backside all over Midtown!”

Kim smiled at Jacob, who looked at her blankly.  “That woman frightens me.”

“Good,” said Kim.  “You might need to be frightened.  We still don’t know what’s on the other side of that door.  Try not to step in the blood.”

“That’s going to be difficult.”  Jacob winced as Kim stepped around the large pool to the edge of the door, bracing her hand on the knob.

She tapped her gun against the door.  “Hello?  Is anyone in there?  NYPD, open up!”

No answer.  She lightly turned the doorknob; the unlocked door opened inward, and Kim balked slightly as the dense fog of dust and cigar smoke hit her nostrils.  Surveying the scene, she found she needed to radio Maria once again.

“Langley, put a rush on that request.  We need your team right now.”

Maria tilted her head in concern as she called back.  “What’s going on down there, Kim?  Everything okay?”

“Everything’s great,” Kim responded.  “That is, the room looks clear of suspects.  But there’s no walking space in this casino with this much blood on the ground, so Newport and I are stuck outside until you guys bag some evidence.”

Kim looked once more around the musky room, her eyes continuously snapping back to the poor woman in the middle of the parquet floor, the woman who apparently put most of her chips on red.

The rest of the forensics team arrived within the hour, and more officers had to be called to hold back the growing crowd.  Standing on a white tarp in the doorway, Kim sealed her lips in disgust; people in her city always seemed to be searching for free entertainment, even at the expense of human life.  One of the younger officers, Craig Phillips, approached and held out a hand, which Kim simply stared at until he dropped it back to his side.

“Detective, I’m a big fan of your career.  It’s an honor to assist you on this case.”  He looked around at the scene.  “So, um…what exactly happened here?”

“We can’t be certain yet, Officer Phillips.  That’s what we’re here to find out.”

“It’s weird,” Phillips said.  “There’s no sign outside, but when you do an internet search for the address, you come up with results for a casino company called Rat Pack Entertainment.  They’ve got over three dozen reviews, all five stars, and all posted within the past six hours.”

Kim’s eyes widened.  “Impressive, Officer.  You got all that from one internet search?”

Phillips grinned.  “They don’t call it a smart phone for nothing, Detective.  Thing might be smarter than your partner over there.”

“Doubtful,” said Jacob without turning around.  He was standing at the poker table nearest the deceased, inspecting every nook and cranny for something the forensics team couldn’t tell him.  “One thing your phone probably can’t tell you is that the killer didn’t set this all up for show.  While it may have only been in operation for six hours, this was, in fact, a working casino.”

He stopped talking.  Kim had to probe him for more, something she was quite used to doing.  “Pretend for a second, Jacob, that I’m not following you.”

Jacob raised his head and extended his pointer finger toward the wall as he paced from one table to the next.  He kept his eyes on the floor.

“Working backward from the spot where she died, you can see the victim started from across the room.  She was over here to begin with, as evidenced by the scratches left on the floor by her heels.”  Jacob stopped at another table.  The marks ended at a chair, which had been pulled out farther than the others.  “Notice how every table has chips piled on top of it.  They’re only missing from two spots. One pile fell to the floor when she died, presumably grasping for something to hold onto as something else caused her to fall.  The other missing pile is right here, where she must have been sitting.”

Kim was by Jacob’s side at this point, trying to make the same connections as her partner.  “So she lost her chips, got up to leave the room, and someone just compulsively murdered her?”

“And took her heart,” said Maria, finishing her inspection of the body.  “She lost a few fingernails to the hardwood as well.  Poor girl must’ve been struggling up to her last breath.”

Kim rubbed her forehead.  She was getting tired of having to talk over this horrible music.  She turned to Officer Phillips, who seemed dead-set on following her around like a puppy dog.  “Phillips, you seem to be vying for a position as our bona fide tech guy.  Want to go see if you can shut this crap up?”

“Sure thing, ma’am.  But I wouldn’t call it crap.  They didn’t call Sinatra the Chairman of the Board for nothing.”

“Just get to work.  And don’t call me ‘ma’am’ ever again unless you want to lose your tongue.”  Phillips went off to find the source of the music while Kim turned to Jacob.  “Why did they call him the Chairman, anyway?”

“I’m not really a fan of music,” said Jacob.  “But I would presume it had something to do with his prominence in Las Vegas.  Considering his recognition, one might assume he had some pull with other entertainers at the time.”

Thinking over this, Kim looked again around the room.  She looked at the pulled-out chairs, the large piles of poker chips.  She inhaled the scent of cigar smoke, lingering as if there were still smokers in the room.  She felt a light bulb going on above her head.

“Pull over entertainers.  So in other words, pull over other people like him.  So if there were, indeed, multiple people in the room—and if there were, as the wound in her back would suggest, a single killer—then whoever killed her knew people like him, people who could’ve written the reviews that Phillips found online.”

Jacob, still looking at the floor, noticed something for the first time.  “That might explain why the blood leading up to the door doesn’t touch any of the chair legs.”

“What’s that got to do with it?” Maria asked.  She hadn’t even noticed the curiosity of the furniture remaining clean in such a bloody crime scene.

This time, Kim understood her partner perfectly.

“He’s saying, Langley,” Kim winced as the music started up again, “that our vic wasn’t alone with the killer when she died.  There were people in these chairs, and they had the sense to pull their seats back when the blood got close enough to touch their shoes.  Whatever happened here, it’s all part of some very real, and very sick, poker match.  And since no one seems to have collected their chips, it’s probable that the tournament is far from over.”