Shoot to Thrill

by PJ Tracy

  ‘Yeah, but the same two guys at two different sites? I don’t know, that’s kind of a coincidence.’

  Gino blew out a breath. ‘If they show up at another site, then I’ll jump on board.’

  ‘Pull up some chairs and we’ll check out some more tape.’

  Gino rolled his eyes. ‘Great.’

  It took another half hour before McLaren found what he was looking for – the same two kids, loitering around the Crystal Court in the IDS building, about half an hour after they’d been filmed at the Metrodome. ‘Goddamn. These could be our perps. Two kids.’

  Just like Chelsea suspected, Magozzi thought.

  Gino leaned back and rubbed his eyes. ‘We’ve still got a

  ‘Yeah, but it might be enough to bring them in for questioning. If we can figure out who the hell they are.’

  ‘Good luck with that. How are you going to match identities with a couple faces in a city with a few hundred thousand people? We can’t question them if we don’t know who they are or where they live.’

  ‘I have an idea,’ Magozzi said quietly.

  The other three detectives looked at him hopefully.

  ‘Do you remember that facial-recognition software Monkeewrench developed?’

  McLaren scrunched his face up for a moment, then his eyes widened. ‘Yeah. That was the program that basically tied up the old Nazi case, right?’

  ‘Exactly. You input the photo of the person you want to identify and the program cross-references with images on the Web and looks for a match.’

  Gino smiled. ‘And there’s one thing you can count on – kids have their pictures plastered all over the Web.’

  Gino spent most of the ride to Harley’s on the phone with Angela. He hung up just as Magozzi turned onto Summit Avenue.

  ‘Everything okay at the B and B?’

  ‘Better than okay. There’s a pool and a restaurant that has cheese curds on the menu. And here I am, fighting crime with an empty stomach and a bad donut hangover.’

  ‘What’s the mood on the street?’

  ‘She said people are pretty spooked. Nobody’s actually letting themselves believe the threat is credible, but so what? They’re still white-knuckling it in Somerset, Wisconsin, just in case. One hell of a big power trip for our doer, or doers.’

  ‘Reminds you how vulnerable we all are. The price of a free society.’

  Gino nodded emphatically. ‘Exactly. What a big problem that is. But, fortunately, I have a great solution – martial law for a few months with you and me in charge. Shut down the Web, beer and fresh donuts for the troops. And all our generals will drive confiscated Caddies just like this one.’ He let out a miserable sigh. ‘This is depressing. Do you really think kids are behind this?’

  ‘I don’t know. What’s scarier? Criminally warped kids on the rampage or real terrorists?’

  ‘The Columbine kids had bombs, and they obviously had mass slaughter on their minds. Hell, they probably used blueprints from some terrorist website.’

  Gino scowled. ‘Thanks for that. And by the way, the Web is really starting to piss me off. It’s like a meet-and-greet for sociopaths all of a sudden.’

  ‘Access and anonymity. If you’re a scumbag, it’s the perfect storm. But in the end, it’s the same old criminals, just a different venue.’

  ‘Yeah, I suppose. Too bad we’re always playing catch-up and doing damage control.’

  ‘That’s what this job is about. It’s what this job has always been about. You win some, you lose some, and you do as much good as you can along the way.’

  Gino grunted. ‘Christ, Leo. You’re sounding like one of those scary, late-night TV inspirational speakers. And here I am, wondering what our new shrink friend would say about the kind of personality that picks a career where your chance of failure is about as good as your chance of success.’

  ‘She would say we’re noble, gallant, right-fighters. Maybe

  ‘Masochism?’

  ‘Yep.’ He pulled into Harley’s driveway and parked behind the airport-rental Fed-mobile that obviously belonged to John Smith, then smiled a little when he saw Roadrunner, waiting anxiously on the front steps for them.

  ‘Damnit,’ Gino said under his breath. ‘I can’t get used to seeing the skinny guy in jeans. It’s just wrong.’

  Roadrunner waved as they approached, then held out his hand. ‘Hey, guys. You have a disk for me?’

  Magozzi handed him a CD in a plastic sleeve and gave him an affectionate pat on the shoulder. ‘Three clips of the same two kids at three of the box sites. How long do you think it’s going to take?’

  Roadrunner’s brow wrinkled. ‘I don’t know … the program is pretty bloated, out of sheer necessity. We’ve tweaked it a little since the last time we used it, but it could still take a while. Come on in, make yourselves at home, I want to get started on this right away.’

  Roadrunner ignored the elevator and took the stairs three at a time up to the office, while Gino headed straight for the kitchen, Magozzi on his heels. They startled John Smith, who was standing by the refrigerator, drinking a glass of orange juice. The poor man looked almost embarrassed for having been caught in the midst of a perfectly normal, human act. ‘Good afternoon, Detectives.’

  Gino’s eyes scanned the empty countertops in disappointment. ‘Afternoon, Agent Smith.’

  ‘Good work with the surveillance footage. Let’s hope it

  Magozzi nodded. ‘That’s right. No explosives, plain glycerin in the jars.’

  ‘So eight more to go.’

  Gino snorted. ‘Eight more that we know about. There could be another hundred out there that we just haven’t found yet. Or maybe the frigging bastards are still out there planting the things, we don’t know. Nobody’s taking a powder on this thing. Not your guys, not ours.’

  ‘How is your murder investigation progressing?’

  ‘It’s not,’ Magozzi said.

  Smith looked troubled. ‘Last we spoke, you mentioned a Minnesota connection with the seven male murder victims, which seemed like a promising detail.’

  ‘We’re still working that angle,’ Gino said. ‘Nothing so far.’

  ‘But it’s quite a coincidence, you must admit.’

  ‘You’re telling me. Minnesota is suddenly up to its eyeballs in Web-related homicide, and now this crap with the boxes.’ He shoved his hands in his pockets and regarded his shoes for a moment – an innocent pair of physical ticks that meant nothing to anybody except Magozzi, who knew his partner’s pre-attack body language better than his own.

  ‘And as long as we’re on the topic of coincidences,’ Gino continued, as Magozzi knew he would; ‘here’s another one. A week ago, you rode into town for a cyber-crime sting before you even knew about the Minnesota connection. Or did you know?’

  Gino frowned. ‘So maybe we’ve got a deviant community escalating right here.’

  ‘It’s a possibility.’

  ‘So why did you pick Minneapolis for a base of operations if you didn’t know anything before you got here?’ Magozzi picked up Gino’s pass.

  Smith almost smiled. ‘You two are an impressive interrogation team.’

  Gino puffed out his chest a little. ‘Thank you.’

  Smith nodded graciously. ‘We’re here because Monkeewrench is here. Regardless of the competency of our Cyber Crimes Division, we felt it critical to utilize all resources available for this investigation. And I think we can all agree that there is nobody better at what they do than Monkeewrench. We did offer to set them up with an office in D.C. for this assignment, but they preferred to work from their home office. We agreed to accommodate them.’

  ‘So this really is just a coincidence?’ Gino asked.

  Smith frowned. Apparently he was as uncomfortable with coincidence as everybody else in law enforcement. ‘It appears that way.’

  Grace, Annie, and Harley all pulled up chairs next to Roadrunner and watched as he loaded the clips from the surveillance footage onto a dedicated computer that ra
n the facial-recognition software.

  ‘Are you going to limit Web-search parameters, buddy?’ Harley asked.

  ‘No.’ He turned around in his chair. ‘Should I?’

  ‘It’s gonna take forever if you don’t. Start out small and match against a few social networking sites first.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll start the search with MySpace, YouTube, and Facebook. They’re the biggies.’

  Annie, who was looking particularly fetching in a floral-printed silk caftan today, gave Harley a rare compliment. ‘That’s the most sensible thing that’s come out of your mouth in days.’

  Harley waggled his eyebrows at her. ‘Everything out of my mouth is sensible. You’re just finally getting it, doll face.’

  ‘Keep the dream alive, Harley,’ she snipped back. ‘Sophistry becomes you. And don’t ever call me doll face again, or else I’ll …’

  Grace tuned out the ongoing tête-à-tête between Harley and Annie and let her eyes drift up to the wall-mounted television they rarely watched but had kept on since the box fiasco had started. Every channel, on network and cable, was still running nonstop coverage of Minneapolis in chaos. How long would it take before this scenario replayed itself

  Annie had apparently burned out her war of words with Harley, because she was watching the television now, too, her lips pursed in a glittery pink pout that matched the shimmering silk poppies on her dress. ‘This is just plain craziness. Look at those freeways – plumb full of nice people who are scared to death to stay in their own city. That’s not right, and we need to do something about it.’

  Grace sighed. ‘The only real solution is to change human nature, and that we can’t do. The Web might be inciting bad behavior and providing a global audience, but in the end, we’re still talking about bad people, not bad technology.’

  ‘The thing that drives me crazy is there are too goddamned many places on the Web where the bad guys can hide,’ Harley grumbled. ‘If we took away their hiding places, maybe they’d think twice.’

  Roadrunner spun his chair around. ‘I just launched the facial-recognition software. Now it’s a waiting game.’ He looked at Harley. ‘And there’s nothing we can do about their hiding places, Harley.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ Harley grumbled. ‘There’s lots we can do, if we have the cojones to do it.’

  Roadrunner rolled his eyes. ‘Oh yeah? Like what? We’ve been tap-dancing in and out of these hostile servers and sites for the past week. The people we’re looking for know how to stay stealth, and every single post that predicted crimes

  ‘I know that, dipshit, I worked with you on all the traces we tried. My point is, we need to cut off the head of the hydra. There are foreign servers we know about that are protecting bad guys seven ways to Sunday and won’t grant access to law enforcement. So what are we supposed to do, play nice? Follow international laws that promote cyber crime? Hell no. We shut ’em down. Every time we find a foreign server tag associated with a crime? Bang! Denial-of-service attack. Viruses. Whatever. And we’ll just keep shutting them down the minute they go back on-line.’

  Annie gaped at him. ‘Sweet Jesus, Harley, you’ve lost your mind. We can’t do that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘First of all, it would probably incite an international incident. Second of all, we would surely end up in those orange jumpsuits.’

  Roadrunner was smirking at Harley. ‘Besides, dipshit, do you know how many servers there are in this country alone, let alone the world? You might as well try to empty the Pacific Ocean with a teaspoon.’

  Harley scowled back. ‘Okay, so maybe shutting down servers isn’t the answer. My point is, our lawbreaking has always been in proportion with whatever crime we’re trying to solve. But the crime is escalating, and so we have to, too. Laws don’t keep up with technology, and those laws deserve to be broken.’

  ‘Pretty ironic that four people who repeatedly break the law spend so much time fighting crime,’ Annie said, scrutinizing a chip in her new manicure.

  ‘Did I hear something about breaking laws?’ Gino’s voice preceded him into the room, along with Magozzi and Smith.

  Harley chuckled. ‘Just international law. Nothing you need to worry about, buddy.’

  ‘How’s it going with the surveillance footage?’ Magozzi addressed the room, but his eyes were fixed on Grace.

  ‘Hi, Magozzi. The program is running now.’

  ‘Pull up some chairs, darlings,’ Annie drawled. ‘We’ve got some time to kill.’

  Ten minutes later, Roadrunner let out a whoop and Harley started laughing so hard, he doubled over, and everybody in the room descended on Roadrunner’s computer.

  ‘What is it?’

  Harley took a few seconds to catch his breath. ‘We got a match,’ he pointed to the enhanced picture of one of the kids from the surveillance tape. The program had pulled up a second picture from MySpace. ‘Can you believe it? This kid was smart enough to use anonymity software that’s so complicated, you practically need two brains just to install and config it, but there he is, right on MySpace,

  Magozzi smiled. ‘Pull up the white pages and we’ll find out.’

  ‘Oh my goodness.’ John Smith slid into the middle of the Caddie’s backseat and started playing with all the electronic controls at his disposal. The back windows went up and down; the rear AC fan went on and off; and some really annoying rap blared out of the back speakers before he figured out how to shut it off. ‘I don’t know what this orange button does.’

  ‘Lumbar support,’ Gino said, snapping his shoulder harness with a proprietary click, as if he thought absolutely nothing of this kind of ride. ‘But you won’t get it in the middle. Right side, right seat, left side, left seat. The middle passenger suffers. It’s kind of a junker.’

  Magozzi closed his lips on a smile and backed out of Harley’s driveway.

  ‘Is this standard for MPD, or just Homicide?’

  ‘Confiscated from a drug dealer,’ Magozzi said, toughing down on the accelerator because Gino was a corrupting influence and made him want to show off. ‘Gino bribed one of the garage evidence guys so we had sweet wheels while ours were being fixed.’

  ‘What do you usually drive?’

  ‘A tacky brown sedan with no heat and no AC and enough get-up-and-go to get up and fall down.’

  ‘I see. So what’s the bribe for this kind of transportation?’

  ‘Hmm.’ John stretched his arms out over the backseat. ‘What are the chances of a retired Federal agent tucking into your department?’

  Magozzi shrugged. ‘We’ve always had a little problem with the Feds. The SAC here is pretty much of an asshole.’

  ‘And it’s a tough gig,’ Gino added. ‘No picnic. They put me on the dunk tank at the MPD festival last year.’

  ‘What’s a dunk tank?’

  ‘That would be man’s ultimate humiliation. You sit on this little seat over a tank of water, and the public throws balls at a target that tips the seat so you fall in. If the seat’s high enough above the water, the impact flattens your balls.’

  John thought about that for a minute. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘I am.’

  Magozzi squealed the Caddie’s rubber at the turn off Snelling onto Lexington. ‘You want the lead on questioning these kids?’

  Smith shrugged. ‘Your city, your precinct.’

  ‘I think the Feds trump the cops on terrorism.’

  ‘That is where the working-together part comes in. Besides, when it comes to terrorism, I’d let a Brownie troop take down a possible witness if they wanted.’

  Gino turned to look at John in the backseat. ‘You’re starting to talk like a cop.’

  ‘I’m practicing so I can get lasagna and a Cadillac.’

  ‘Good God, Leo, are you listening to this guy? A week in the Midwest and he’s starting to get funny.’

  John closed his eyes. Another item for the slippery-slope

  ‘They’re not juvies,’ Magozzi reminded him. ‘Eighteen, both of t
hem.’

  ‘Barely. I am also a little uncomfortable questioning these boys in particular. Technically, we don’t have a great deal to support their involvement.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ Gino snorted. ‘Little bastards are in this so deep we’re going to have to rip their balls off and stuff them in their ears to get them to talk. And personally, I’m looking forward to that.’

  Magozzi caught a glance of John’s alarmed look in the rearview mirror. ‘Gino hasn’t done that in a really long time,’ he said genially.

  The house was a surprise – one of the largest in a new development of McMansions people bought on credit to impress their neighbors with how much money they supposedly had. Magozzi knew the inside by heart. Lots of electronics, lots of granite and upscale appliances in a kitchen they never used, lots of bills hidden away in a drawer somewhere. People with real money never bought places like this, because there was something tacky that shone through all the pretense of luxury like a Target T-shirt under a cashmere sweater.

  The man who finally came to the door was dressed in what old movies had taught him wealthy men wore at home in the evening. In his peripheral vision Magozzi saw Gino cover his mouth quickly, and he didn’t blame him. The idiot was wearing one of those silly shiny robes over his white shirt and suit pants. ‘Good evening, sir,’ he said respectfully, flipping open his badge case and holding it up. ‘Are you Mr. Zellickson?’

  ‘Yes, Officer. What can I do for you?’

  ‘Detective Magozzi, MPD. This is my partner, Detective Rolseth, and this is Special Agent John Smith of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Is your son Kyle at home?’

  Mr. Zellickson looked genuinely confused. ‘Yes, he is … did you say the FBI?’

  ‘That’s correct, sir.’

  ‘What on earth would you want with my son?’

  Magozzi smiled briefly. ‘Just a few questions, sir. We think he and a friend of his may have inadvertently witnessed something pertinent to a crime we’re investigating and hoped he’d be willing to help us out by answering a few questions.’