Want to Play?

by P. J. Tracy

  ‘You bet.’

  ‘Note that Dr Rambachan found semen in his underwear and has determined that Wilbur Daniels ejaculated very near the time of his death. He also bit his own hand, presumably out of passion, so there was obviously a sexual element involved. Whether or not it has anything to do with the killer, we don’t know yet.’

  ‘So maybe he was just wanking in the bathroom and got a little surprise in the form of a bullet to the head,’ Louise offered.

  ‘Possible. Or maybe the killer brought him there under the auspices of a little afternoon delight.’

  ‘So if our doer’s a man, that makes Daniels a fag,’ Louise stated frankly.

  ‘Not very PC, Louise,’ Gino said.

  She tossed her head indignantly. ‘Hey, it’s okay for me to say “fag.” ’ She turned her attention back to Magozzi. ‘So if he was gay, what are you thinking? Maybe a series of hate crimes?’

  ‘Not at this point,’ Magozzi said. ‘We don’t have any info on the girl on the angel yet, but there’s absolutely no indication that the jogger was a homosexual. But that Wilbur Daniels might have been is a possibility to keep in mind when we retrace his steps before he set foot on that paddle wheeler. And that takes us to page three of the autopsy report. Stomach contents.’

  ‘Oh, God, I haven’t even had breakfast yet,’ Detective Peterson groaned. He was a recent transfer from St Paul, whip-thin with a pallor to his skin that made Magozzi think meat hadn’t passed his lips in several years.

  ‘Okay, there was beer and eight mostly undigested mini corn dogs in the vic’s stomach. The very sort of mini corn dogs they serve at Steamboat Parker’s Grill down by the river and nowhere else in the general vicinity. He was there less than an hour before he was shot on the boat. McLaren, you get down there with his photo as soon as they open. Maybe somebody remembers him, or better yet, maybe he was with someone, and if so, then chances are pretty good that’s our killer and we can have a sketch worked up for the media.’

  Aaron Langer, fresh from outside in a black topcoat and leather gloves, sporting violet circles under his eyes, strode into the conference room waving a sheet of paper. ‘Sorry I’m late. We just got an ID on the girl in the cemetery. Maybe something we can work with.’

  ‘Terrific. Tell us what you’ve got.’

  Langer peeled off his gloves, assumed his lectern demeanor, and addressed the room. ‘Missing Persons got a call from the Mounties last night. A Toronto couple had reported their eighteen-year-old daughter missing after she took a Greyhound to Denver via Minneapolis. The bus stopped at the downtown terminal two nights ago, with a layover.’

  ‘The night of the cemetery murder,’ Magozzi said.

  ‘Right. Her name was Alena Vershovsky. She and her parents emigrated from Kiev five years ago. Her parents are also both computer programmers, which might mean nothing – half the Russian immigrants are computer programmers. But something to bear in mind. Anyhow, a family friend in Denver met her bus yesterday, but she wasn’t on it. We just confirmed a match on the dental records. I’ve got two guys on their way down to the terminal now, and we can all pray somebody can give us a visual on this piece of shit.’

  There was a long silence. Nobody had ever heard Langer curse before.

  ‘Any chance she was a homosexual?’

  ‘Doesn’t seem likely. Apparently she had a pretty active dating life. But who knows? Anybody can swing both ways. Why?’

  ‘It’s a possibility with the guy on the paddle wheeler. We were hoping for a common thread.’

  Langer shrugged. ‘Nothing pops so far.’

  ‘Okay, let’s leave it alone for now. So we’ll have people canvassing the bus terminal and Steamboat Parker’s, looking for someone who was in both places, and we’ve got a team still working the registration list of game-players . . .’

  ‘We’re never going to get anything out of that list,’ Louise Washington complained. ‘I worked an extra shift on that thing last night and only cleared five players.’

  Magozzi nodded grimly. ‘I know it’s slow, but we’ve got to keep working it. Freedman? How are they doing on the door-to-doors?’

  ‘During the day? Slow as crippled snails. Most of the people who signed on to the game with legitimate addresses apparently have legitimate jobs, because nobody’s home. We’re going to be knocking on a lot of doors after dark. Plus you took a lot of my people for the mall.’

  ‘I know. Couldn’t be helped.’

  ‘Is our presence on the street compromised?’ Chief Malcherson asked Freedman.

  ‘It’s thin, sir.’

  ‘How thin?’

  ‘I wouldn’t want it to get any thinner.’

  Magozzi nodded. ‘Okay. We’re getting some highway patrol and county people to help out. You put them where you need to fill the holes. Gino, you want to lay out the mall?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Gino pushed away from the wall by the door and managed to stand semi-upright. ‘Murder number four in the game, folks, staged at the Mall of America.’

  Everyone started flipping through their files, looking for the fourth murder scenario.

  ‘In the parking ramps, right?’ Louise Washington asked.

  ‘Right. And since this dirtbag’s been doing one every twenty-four, we gotta figure it goes down today. In the ramps, in a car, no specific make or model. We were a day late and a dollar short on the riverboat, and we don’t want to make that mistake again, so Magozzi and I scoped the place last night, put together some shift rosters, and had people in place by four A.M. We’ve got two officers on every ramp level, and mall management called in all their security, which gives us another set of eyes on each deck. They also doubled up monitors on the closed-circuit cameras.’

  ‘So it’s covered,’ Sergeant Freedman said.

  Gino snorted softly. ‘Not even close. They’ve got acres of ramp out there on four to five different levels and space for thousands of cars. We could pull everyone on the force and there’s still no way in hell we’ve got enough people to monitor a space that big as closely as we should.’

  ‘You see the newscasts this morning?’ Louise asked. ‘Everyone in the city knows the next target is a shopper at that mall. No one’s going to go there today.’

  ‘From your lips to God’s ear,’ Gino said. ‘But I don’t think it’s going to happen. You know the deal. Nobody thinks they’re going to be the victim. It’s always someone else. They’ll listen to the news and they’ll take precautions – careful to look in the backseat before they get in the car, maybe go with a friend instead of alone – but the news is also covering our presence out there, remember, which is going to make a lot of people feel safer than they should, and they will go. They get over a hundred thousand people a day out there, and even if half of them decide to stay home, that still leaves fifty thousand for the killer to pick from.’

  There was silence in the room for a moment, then Sergeant Freedman repeated his sentiments from yesterday, when he was talking about the paddle wheeler. ‘Shut it down.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, yes,’ Johnny McLaren agreed quickly. ‘It’s a no-brainer, isn’t it? Shut the place down, no shoppers, no shoppers get killed. What’s the downside?’

  Gino shook his head. ‘I’ll tell you the downside. What are you going to do? Shut it down indefinitely? Which first of all is illegal, and second of all you’re going to throw the whole state economy into a tailspin, and third of all, what’s to keep the guy from just waiting till we open it up again?’

  ‘So just shut it down until we catch this guy,’ Freedman suggested.

  Magozzi said quietly, ‘As of right now, the only shot we’ve got at catching this guy is staking out the places we can that we know he’s going to hit. We close the mall, we lose the chance.’

  ‘And what if we miss him?’ McLaren was insistent. ‘You said yourselves there’s no way we can cover the ramps completely. So what if he slips past us? What if someone else dies because we didn’t close the goddamned mall?!’

  ‘
What if we shut it down for just a couple of days?’ Langer asked. ‘We could divert all the manpower to the door-to-doors on the registration list, catch him that way, or maybe we’ll get lucky at Steamboat Parker’s or the terminal. Maybe someone saw him –’

  ‘And maybe not,’ Magozzi said. ‘And maybe he’s not on that registration list. Maybe he got into that game through a back door even the Monkeewrench people can’t find. Then what?’

  Chief Malcherson stood up so suddenly he almost knocked over his chair. ‘Is that possible?’

  Magozzi shrugged. ‘Anything’s possible. The geeks at Monkeewrench say no, there’s no way anybody could hack into their site, but that’s what the people at the CIA said before that thirteen-year-old hacker downloaded their eyes-only files, remember?’

  All the color seemed to drain from Malcherson’s ruddy face. ‘You said no player got past murder seven,’ he almost whispered.

  ‘If he came in a back door, he’s got them all.’

  ‘Dear God.’ Malcherson sank back down into his chair.

  ‘At least this hit’s in a specific location,’ Gino interjected. ‘From now on, it just gets worse. The next one’s a teacher in a classroom. You know how many teachers there are in the Cities alone? So what do we do? Stake out all the schools, a cop in each one? We don’t have enough cops in the whole goddamned country to cover that kind of ground. And let me tell you that if you shut down the Mall of America to save a shopper, you damn well better shut down every school in the state to save a teacher, not to mention sparing little Johnny Whoever the trauma of seeing his teacher’s brain get splattered all over the blackboard . . .’

  ‘Gino . . .’ Magozzi tried to interrupt, but Gino was rolling, losing it, his voice climbing the pitch and volume ladder, his fists clenched, his face flushed.

  ‘ . . . so what you’ve got is some fucking psycho paralyzing the whole city, because after the teacher you’ve got the ER tech, and what are you gonna do then? Stop the ambulances? You realize what would happen if they all stayed home . . . ?’

  A sharp rap on the door behind him made Gino jump, and Magozzi figured if he didn’t have a heart attack right then, he probably never would. He saw Gloria’s dark face peering through the glass to make sure it was clear before she opened the door and stepped inside. Gino looked like he was going to kill her.

  ‘Those Monkeewrench people are downstairs,’ she said, ‘and they are making a serious fuss.’

  Gino snapped at her. ‘Then sit on ’em Gloria. We’re busy in here.’

  ‘Okay, but I think you should know the queen bee –’

  ‘MacBride?’

  ‘Yeah, her. The little black-haired whippet. Anyway, she’s standing right outside the press room. Said she’d give you five minutes before she walks in there and starts talking.’

  ‘About what?’ Gino demanded.

  Gloria lifted one big shoulder, shifting the yards and yards of orange and brown material that covered her body in a way that was somehow indecent. ‘About how the Keystone cops – and I’m quoting here, you understand; that’s not me talkin’, that’s her – are sittin’ on their asses upstairs ignoring people downstairs who have been contacted by the killer.’

  Magozzi caught his breath. So did everyone else. ‘What?’

  ‘That’s what she said, and that’s all she said. Won’t talk to me. Just you two.’

  ‘Get them up here,’ Gino growled.

  ‘You got it. Leo? Gino? I need a personal word in the hall.’ She swished out the door in a swirl of material.

  ‘Smoke ’em if you got ’em,’ Magozzi said, hopping off the desk, catching Chief Malcherson’s alarmed expression, as if someone would actually have the nerve to light up in a government building.

  He and Gino followed Gloria out to the hall, closing the door behind them.

  ‘You want to tell me whose prints were on this, Leo?’ She dug in the voluminous folds of her dress and handed over Magozzi’s cell phone.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, whatever rock you turned over sure woke up the dragon. We got a hit on the prints, but the FBI’s got a cover on it. No name, no nothin’. Nancy over in Latents tried to shine up to ’em, and all they’d give her was that they were flagged, and that they were on an open file. But here’s the interesting part. You know those suits waiting in the chief’s office? About three milliseconds after I got the call, they were slithering all over my desk real casual-like, saying, Gee, you know those prints Detective Magozzi ran through AFIS last night? Well, somehow we lost the name on the ten-card, can you give it to us again?’ She paused for an eloquent snort of disgust. ‘Like I was going to fall for that one, even if I knew anything. Which I don’t,’ she added pointedly. Gloria didn’t like to be out of the loop.

  Magozzi looked at Gino. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Curiouser and curiouser.’

  ‘Okay, Gloria. I’ll tell you what you do. Tell them we need to see that file, to have it faxed over here, and we’ll be down to take a look at it when we’re finished up here.’

  ‘They’re not going to do that. They’ve got a cover on that file, I told you.’

  ‘I know. Tell ’em anyway.’

  ‘And when they refuse?’

  ‘Fuck ’em,’ Gino said.

  Gloria scowled at him. ‘You fuck ’em. I’ve got standards.’ She turned and clopped away down the hall.

  Langer and Peterson were getting ready to leave when Gino and Magozzi reentered the room.

  ‘We’re on mall relief in an hour,’ Langer explained.

  ‘Sit tight for a minute,’ Magozzi said. ‘I want everybody’s take on these Monkeewrench people.’

  ‘Good,’ Langer took a seat happily. ‘I want to see the cop-hater who carries all the time. MacBride, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Oh, this should be good.’ Louise walked up to the coffeemaker and grabbed a cup. ‘Shoot-out in the task force room.’

  ‘I’ve got a uniform at the door. No one gets past one of my men with a weapon.’ Freedman glowered at her as she passed his chair.

  She smiled and patted his huge head. ‘I know that, honey. Just kidding.’

  ‘Did everyone see that?’ Freedman looked around at the others. ‘She called me honey and she patted my head. That’s sexual harassment.’

  ‘In your dreams, baby.’

  ‘Now she called me baby. I don’t have to take this . . .’

  Magozzi looked on from the front of the room, feeling a little like a grade-school teacher watching a class of miscreants spin out of control, and that was all right. In this job, jumping from murder to mischief in the space of a second was par for the course. Maybe essential.

  Gino stepped over to stand beside him, smiling as he watched Louise shaking a donut over Freedman’s head, dusting him with white powder. ‘Keystone cops,’ he said.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘You gonna let MacBride and her crew walk in and see this?’

  Magozzi shrugged. ‘You do the time, might as well do the crime.’

  ‘Magozzi?’ Chief Malcherson was standing at the board of victim photos. ‘Just out of curiosity, who was the killer in the game?’

  Magozzi got busy adjusting his tie. ‘The chief of police, sir.’

  27

  When the Monkeewrench entourage filed into the room, the ambient temperature seemed to drop about ten degrees. Magozzi wasn’t sure if the human iceberg leading the pack was responsible or if it was the collective hostility of a roomful of defensive cops. If it was the latter, MacBride seemed utterly oblivious to the chilly reception.

  She was wearing the same canvas duster and high English riding boots she’d worn at the Monkeewrench loft the day before. Everything black, right down to the jeans and T-shirt beneath. He’d already decided that for this woman it wasn’t a fashion statement, more like a uniform that served a function he hadn’t completely figured out yet. He put the jeans and T-shirt off to comfort, and the duster to hide the gun, but the boots were a myste
ry. They were that thick, rigid leather that never yields, made for riding, not walking, and you had to think they were hot and uncomfortable as hell.

  The duster flapped open as she walked, exposing the empty leather holster, and most of the eyes in the room went to that. Nothing made cops more nervous than armed civilians.

  Her hair swung as she turned to face the room, as dark and loose as her eyes were cool and steady, and while the cop in Magozzi bristled at the arrogance of her demeanor, the artist in him was struck again by that kind of pure physical beauty that makes you take a quick mental step backward, simply because you don’t see it very often.

  None of which mitigated her irritating bitchiness one iota.

  He gave her a curt nod, which she returned in kind, along with a searing glance that seemed to be a challenge of some sort. Just what she was challenging, he had no idea. His competency? His suit? His existence on the planet? Maybe all of the above. But he had no interest in petty brinksmanship right now; he only cared about what she had to say.

  Magozzi watched the faces of his detectives shift from angry to curious as the bizarre assemblage gathered in a cluster close to the door. Grace MacBride in her fox-hunter/gunslinger garb; Roadrunner towering in bright yellow Lycra, looking disturbingly like a pencil; the husky, leather-clad Harley Davidson with his ponytail and beard; fat Annie Belinsky in an impossibly orange getup, exuding sensuality no Playboy centerfold had ever come close to; and Mitch Cross, whose conservative appearance looked positively eccentric next to the others. Magozzi still couldn’t quite figure him into the picture. He stood off to one side, looking confused, displaced, and on the verge of meltdown.

  Cross and Chief Malcherson had a lot in common, he realized – right down to the expensive suits and the high blood pressure. Maybe the two of them could get together later for beers and Xanax.

  Gino stared at the group with the dull disbelief of a World War II vet suddenly transported to Woodstock, then moved back along the wall, distancing himself.