Shoot to Thrill

by P. J. Tracy

  “I do indeed.”

  Frost was silent for a few moments. “Uh . . . those computer wizards you’re working with—how good are they?”

  “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you. What do you need?” Frost sighed. “Well, we’ve got enough with the positive ID to get a warrant for airline records to see if our boy may have traveled on the night in question, but it’s going to take some time. The airlines all get a grace time to have their legal beagles check our warrant to cover their butts before they let us look at manifests, and we’ve got a hell of a lot of airlines to go through.”

  Smith cleared his throat and looked up at Grace. “Hmm. Let me see what I can do to speed up the process.”

  “That would be appreciated. I’m not suggesting anything under the table, of course.”

  “No, of course not.” That’s why you asked how good our computer wizards were.

  “I just figured the FBI might have some special kind of clearance. You have a fax number for me? I don’t want this photo anywhere near the Web after what you told me about how these guys are operating. We don’t want to spook him.”

  “What do you need?” Grace asked once he’d hung up.

  “The victim came out of the coma and gave Medford a positive ID from a photo spread, but they can’t find him. They noted the similarities between the Wisconsin attack and theirs, and think he may have flown out there, but the airlines are dragging their feet releasing manifests.”

  Grace sighed, popped a single shrimp into her mouth. “What’s his name?”

  He hesitated only a moment. “Clinton Huttinger.”

  “Give me five minutes.”

  Smith stared after her as she left for the upstairs office, feeling like he’d just taken the first step onto a slippery slope he’d been avoiding his entire life.

  CHAPTER 24

  CHIEF FROST HADN’T BEEN IN AN AIRPORT IN YEARS. AFTER a lifetime of watching white tinsel contrails decorate the blue sky over his head, he still couldn’t convince himself that any plane he boarded wouldn’t plummet back to earth. Worse yet, it wouldn’t plummet fast; it would take a long, long time so he could be good and scared before he got good and dead.

  The fear mystified him. He wasn’t afraid of high-speed car chases, confronting armed robbers, or even walking into a domestic, but just sitting there listening to the roar and thrust of those fragile metal tubes shooting up into the air over the terminal made him sweat.

  Last time he’d been on a plane he was a teenager, looking around at all the other passengers reading magazines, chatting and laughing, comfortable as could be to be mounted on a rocket filled with thousands of gallons of explosive fuel. If they thought it was okay, it had to be, right? A fatherly type sitting next to him saw through his thin ho-hum veneer and patted his hand. “Flying scares me shitless, too, son,” he said, and that’s when he realized everyone else was faking, pretending they actually thought airplanes were airworthy when they knew damn well they were going to crash. He never trusted people or planes again.

  “You look a little pale, Chief.” Theo took the seat next to him, bracing knife-sharp elbows on nowhere thighs. It was a wonder they didn’t slice right through what little flesh he had.

  “I don’t like airports.”

  “Me neither. I hate flying. Everybody thinks skydiving is such a big macho thrill game. I always thought jumping out of a plane made a hell of a lot more sense than staying in one.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Huttinger’s flight is still on time. Should be touching down in the next fifteen minutes. And we’re cleared through security if you want to go to the gate.”

  “Not yet.”

  Theo pulled out his notebook. “I checked in with Ginny. They’re still tossing the house with the on-site Feds. They pulled his PC first and sent it off to Cyber Crimes, but so far they haven’t found the laptop.”

  “He’s got it with him.”

  Theo smiled. “And we’ve got a warrant. Judge said we had the go-ahead to search his nostrils with a power drill if we wanted.”

  Frost looked at him. “Judge Krinnen said that?”

  “Actually, I left out a couple of really colorful words. I’m telling you, the man surprised me. He’s like a million years old and as soft-spoken as a little girl and he scared me to death. You ever see his gun collection?”

  “Didn’t know he had one.”

  “Hemingway would eat his heart out, and the judge was real set on showing me every one and describing what kind of damage it would do to Clinton Huttinger if he ever got a bead on the guy.”

  Chief Frost sighed, pushed himself up out of the hard plastic chair, and adjusted his belt. “Can’t say I blame him. I want to kill this guy myself.”

  Goddamnit, he shouldn’t have said that out loud. You didn’t have that kind of luxury when you were a cop about to arrest a suspect who nearly killed a woman you’d loved twenty years ago. Police brutality wasn’t a charge your career recovered from. It was always there on your record in black-and-white, and sometimes, God forbid, it gave the suspect a cause of action and let him walk. Now he’d really have to suck it up and treat Huttinger with an overdose of care and respect, and the prospect made him sick.

  He’d spent the two-hour drive down here looking at the scenery, sucking in the intense greens of an Oregon summer, smelling the pine coming in through the open window; but all he really saw were Marian’s tortured eyes, and all he’d smelled was disinfectant and old blood and adhesive.

  It was the same when he walked through security and showed the pass that let him carry fifteen pounds of metal on his belt down to the gate. The sensors beeped when he passed through the archway, and they sounded like the monitors measuring Marian’s life back in the ICU.

  It wasn’t really a long walk to the gate. It just seemed that way. Halfway there Theo stopped for a cell call, then hurried to catch up. “Crime Scene might have found the knife in Huttinger’s dishwasher.”

  “There goes that evidence.”

  “Maybe not. It’s serrated. They can pull a positive blade match from where he cut her.”

  Frost stopped in his tracks, thinking autopsy. You didn’t excise flesh and bone for a weapon match from a live person, which meant Marian was dead. He didn’t have to say anything. All Theo had to do was look at his Chief to know what he was thinking.

  “Oh, damn, Chief, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. Marian’s doing fine. Getting better.”

  Frost closed his eyes and exhaled.

  “But the thing is, well, the throat wound was pretty ragged, you know? So the surgeon had to do some trimming before he could close it. He’d done a turn as county coroner a few years back, so he knows evidence. He took care trimming and saved the flesh for a possible match someday.”

  Frost was looking out the window at the 737 pulling up to the gate. His smile was slow in coming, and just a little scary.

  Clinton Huttinger was one of the first off the plane, and never in a million years would Frost have passed him on the street and thought that this was an evil man. He looked just like the pictures Theo had pulled off the Web. Clean-cut, well-dressed but not pretentious, a little half-smile permanently placed on lips that told everyone who saw him what a fine, gentle fellow he was.

  “Mr. Huttinger?”

  “Yes.” The smile broadened. “Can I help you?”

  He didn’t even go pale when Frost started the very careful process of placing him under arrest. He just stood there with a baffled little-boy smile, cooperating in every way possible, looking to all the curious passers-by more like a Boy Scout than a crazed killer. Frost played to the gathering crowd, apologizing to Huttinger for the necessity of handcuffs, inquiring as to their comfort.

  “They’re fine, Officer.”

  “Chief.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s Chief Frost, Medford Police Department.”

  “Oh. Pardon me. It’s just that I won’t be able to carry my bags with my hands behind my back.”


  Frost smiled benevolently. “Of course not. We’ll be happy to carry them for you. Just the single case and the laptop?”

  “That’s right.”

  Theo moved to pick up the luggage but the Chief intercepted him, bending to pick up the hard-bodied Samsonite case with the metal protectors on the corners, then standing quickly, suitcase swinging as he turned back to face Huttinger. Centrifugal force was an amazing thing, he thought, as the case swung wide and fast with the turn, headed directly for the gentle English teacher’s crotch. Huttinger took a quick, panicked step backward, and Frost managed to stop the case’s momentum with an inch to spare. He looked head-on at Huttinger and smiled.

  “Whew. That was a close one.”

  Huttinger didn’t say a thing, but he wasn’t smiling anymore.

  CHAPTER 25

  GINO WAS LEANING BACK IN HIS OFFICE CHAIR, HEAD THROWN back, digging the heels of his palms into his eyes. “Are my eyes bleeding? Because they feel like they are.”

  Magozzi peered around the towers of paper that dominated the space between their desks to assess his partner’s current ocular condition. “I can’t tell because you have your fists punched into your eye sockets. But if they weren’t bleeding before, they probably are now.”

  Gino sat up, flipped over another sheet of paper from his stack, and stared at it like a mortal enemy. “Is there an ink shortage, or what? I swear to God, anything in print is getting smaller day by day. I always used to wonder what kind of people bought those cheap magnifier reading glasses they always have in baskets at drugstore checkout counters. Now I know.”

  “Old guys like us.”

  “Yeah. Exactly. So what are you squinting at?”

  “North Shore and Chicago cases.”

  “Find any connections?”

  Magozzi leaned back in his chair and rubbed at the knots in his neck, which made really creepy, crunchy noises when he pushed on them. “Nothing ties these two together, for sure. None of the same players as far as law enforcement goes, and two totally different crimes—one pedophile and one gangbanger. How about you?”

  “I was looking at the Elmore Sweet transcripts, but I started to get nauseated, then I started to get pissed, so I thought I’d read something lighter for a break.”

  “War and Peace?”

  “L.A. He was the guy who was driving after his fifth DUI revocation and killed that family on 35W a few years back. Guess he decided to relocate.”

  “Maybe he was getting threats from the vics’ family.”

  Gino shrugged. “I’ll look into it.”

  “Any overlaps with Sweet and L.A.?”

  “Not that I can see. At least not yet. I still have some more dead trees to get through before I can tell you for sure.”

  Magozzi sighed and returned his attention to the file he was reading. “I guess all we can do is make a list of our major players, and we’ll compare notes once we get through all this paper.”

  “Which is going to take forever. You know how many names I have swimming in my head right now? Perps, vics, next of kin, witnesses, family members, lawyers, cops . . . This is a nightmare.”

  “Maybe we should get Smith on board. He’s sharing with us; only seems polite to share with him. After all, these are his cases, too.”

  Gino’s mouth curled into a smile. “I like your train of thought, Leo. Very devious, like something I’d think of. Give him a call.”

  While Magozzi was trying to reach Smith, Detective Johnny McLaren ambled in and set a big box of donuts on Gino’s desk. “Here’s your cliché of the day.”

  Gino could literally feel his pupils dilate. “Are you kidding me, Johnny? Are you angling for beatification, or what?”

  “I won the donut jackpot this week. Thought I’d share the wealth.”

  “What donut jackpot, and why the hell don’t I know about it?”

  “Because you never come to my poker games. The biggest loser of the week has to buy for the biggest winner.”

  Gino reverently lifted the lid of the box and selected a glazed disk of heaven. “You are my hero.”

  McLaren eyed the stacks of paper on Gino’s and Magozzi’s desks. “Jesus. That’s a Muir’s Forest worth of pulp—were there just fifty new homicides that I didn’t hear about?”

  “Just our one river bride, but it might be connected to a bunch of other ones all across the country.”

  “No way.”

  “Yes, way. It could be huge. We’re even working with the Feds and Monkeewrench on this.”

  Johnny’s red brows peaked into twin Vs. “Sounds interesting. A hell of a lot more interesting than the Little Mogadishu drive-by Tinker and I pulled. We solved that homicide in about one second.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah. The perp was a shit driver—couldn’t shoot and steer at the same time, so he wrapped his car around a tree. When the first responders yanked him out through the window, he was still holding the gun.”

  “That’s priceless.”

  Magozzi finally hung up the phone, greeted Johnny, then turned to Gino. “Smith’s tied up and can’t help us right now. They’ve got a hot lead on the Wisconsin guy.”

  “Excellent.”

  “Who’s Smith? Who’s the Wisconsin guy?” McLaren asked.

  Gino gestured to the files on their desks. “All part of this mess. You want in on it? We could use an extra pair of eyes big-time.”

  McLaren shrugged. “Sure, why not? Our docket’s clear right now. I’m officially on vacation anyhow, so maybe the Chief will throw me some overtime.”

  Gino pulled a chair for McLaren, and he and Magozzi gave him a quick overview and two of the murder files.

  Magozzi said, “Right now we’re just looking for a link between the victims.”

  “Cool. Cop work. I can do that.”

  “Write down every name you see, and anything else you think might be interesting.”

  An hour later Johnny finished with the first file and spent five minutes leaning back in his chair with his mouth open, trying to hit his eyes with eye drops.

  Gino snatched one of his pages out of the saline shower. “Jeez, McLaren, take the rainstorm to the can, will you?”

  Johnny wiped at the water on his cheeks. “I hate these damn things. Could somebody tell me why you can never get this crap in your eyes unless you’re standing in front of a mirror? I know where my eyes are, and even if I didn’t, I’m looking straight up at Mr. Nozzle and still can’t hit the target.”

  Magozzi reached for his phone when it rang. “Your eyes were closed, McLaren.”

  “No.”

  “I was watching. It’s a reflex. You see the drop coming down, you blink at the last second. Gino, take him to the can and staple his lids open.”

  “No problem.”

  “I heard that, Magozzi.” Grace’s voice came over the phone, making him smile. “And I like the new greeting. A lot more creative than saying ‘Homicide, Detective Magozzi.’ Whose lids are you stapling open?”

  “McLaren’s.”

  “What if I’d been a customer?”

  “I would have said you’d misdialed and gotten the mayor’s office.” He heard a soft chuckle, which was really weird. “Stop laughing, Grace. You’re scaring me.”

  “I’m happy. We got him, Magozzi. Clinton Huttinger, a/k/a Teacher of the Year, a/k/a attacker in both Medford, Oregon, and Wisconsin. Medford PD just arrested him at the airport.”

  “That’s great news, Grace. Really great. Any chance he’s connected to any of the other murders?”

  “None. The Medford cops checked on that, and he’s got solid alibis in public places for every one of the others, including your bride. Sorry, Magozzi. But he knew the pre-post code, so his computer may tell us something. We’ll let you know.”

  “I need a date, Grace.”

  Silence for a few seconds. “Leave your cell on, Magozzi. It might be late, it might not be at all.”

  CHAPTER 26

  JOHN SMITH WAS AT THE
WINDOW TABLE IN THE MONKEEWRENCH office, looking out through the leaves of a tall tree with a trunk as big around as his great-aunt Harriet five years after she discovered fast food and Twinkies. He wondered how old the tree was. Decades, certainly; maybe centuries, or however long trees lived. Maybe this one had witnessed the migrations of the Ojibwa and the Sioux, the growing pains of a city that kept changing its identity, depending on which industry or immigrant population was dominant, or maybe Harley had planted it last year. John didn’t know, and would never have wondered about such a thing three days ago. It disturbed him enormously that such questions were starting to occur to him, and he blamed Monkeewrench for putting him at a table where the tree constantly distracted him.

  Why did he care how old it was? Such musings were the provenance of people who wore funny wide shoes and hung wooden beads around their necks. If you couldn’t kill it or pick it and throw it in a stew pot for supper, nature’s bounty had never held any interest for him. For the most part, it was messy, sometimes dangerous, and always annoying. Especially insects. They’d been bad in the often humid climate of Washington, D.C., but in Minnesota they were enough to drive a man insane. The one and only time in his career he’d been tempted to draw his weapon was when a swarm of gnats had descended on him in the motel parking lot.

  And what was so wrong about killing all the insects? Who cared if the frogs died with them? The only thing frogs were good for was keeping the insect population down, and clearly they were lousy at that. So if the insects were gone, the frogs could either find another job or go extinct. That was the way of the world . . . and, come to think of it, a pretty good description of the Bureau’s mandatory retirement policy.

  His cell phone lay forgotten on the table next to him, still warm from almost an hour of calls informing those who needed to know that Clinton Huttinger had been arrested in Oregon and was now under lock and key. A surprisingly big part of John understood that he had been a very small part of capturing this particular psycho, (making the world safe for waitresses everywhere!), and every time he passed the news along in that dignified, self-effacing manner that the classes in Quantico had drilled into him, he felt a little flutter in his stomach, a sense of that satisfaction his father had talked about when he locked a bad guy into the back cage of his squad, and the feeling was like a narcotic. Too bad it had happened for the first time so near the end of his law enforcement career.