Play To Kill

by P. J. Tracy

'I'll give you guys all the paper on this so you can take a closer look for yourself, but here's the short version -

  Minnesota is the common denominator for six of the victims. And five of those six have criminal records right here in the Land of Lakes. What's that do for you?'

  Gino made a sock face. 'Makes me want to move to Iowa.'

  'Which vies have the sheets?' Magozzi wanted to know.

  Tommy consulted a handwritten piece of scrap paper that looked like it was written in Aramaic. 'Elmore Sweet in Cleveland - and by the way, you guys were right about him being the same weasel from Ely. Justice is finally served.'

  'Awesome,' Gino said, pumping his fist.

  Tommy continued deciphering his notes. 'Then your North Shore guy, Austin, Chicago, and L.A. Your river bride is the sixth Minnesota link, but he-she-whatever didn't have a record, just a lifetime resident of our fair state.'

  'All men.'

  Yep. The two women have no records and no Minnesota connection.'

  'So what kind of crimes are we looking at?' Gino asked.

  'Well, basically, you've got a Greatest Hits list of dirty deeds: the two pedophiles - Elmore Sweet and your North Shore hole in one; vehicular manslaughter, a nasty domestic, and a drive-by that popped a five-year-old girl asleep in her bed.'

  Gino had that gleam in his eye that always terrified Magozzi, because it was usually the precursor to some spectacularly whacked theory. 'Bad men,' he pointed out. 'Bad, dead men, specifically targeted, who all had their own victims at one point. I know what this is. Couldn't be more clear.'

  Magozzi and Tommy didn't even bother to ask, because they knew Gino would march out his latest and greatest without encouragement.

  'We're looking at a bunch of vigilante killings, guys. It's the only thing that makes sense. And let's face it. We've been getting more and more of those lately.'

  Tommy thought about that, tipping his head back and forth to shake the memories out of his brain. 'All those old people killing each other.'

  'Exactly. And let's not forget our little snowman fiasco just last winter…'

  'All right, all right,' Magozzi said irritably. 'So we've had some vigilante killings. They've always been around, just like any other motive for murder. But that's not what's happening here.'

  Gino folded his arms over his chest. 'I got two words for you. Charles Bronson.'

  'Who's Charles Bronson?' Tommy asked.

  'Are you kidding me? Mr. Vigilante is who he is, or was. He might be dead, I'm not sure. Anyway, it's an old movie. Thugs kill his family, he loads up and off he goes, popping people right and left. That was a seriously popular movie, and you know why? Because sometimes the justice system lets people down, and until we stop letting pedophiles and murderers walk, we're going to have Charles Bronsons out there.'

  Magozzi rolled his eyes. 'Damnit, Gino, I don't care how many vigilantes are out there, these are not revenge killings.'

  'Why not?'

  'First off, it's too risky, because there's a past personal connection. Second, revenge killers are focused on eliminating whoever they're pissed at, not in showing off trophies.'

  'Maybe they all found each other on the Web and egged each other on, like Chelsea said.'

  Magozzi shook his head. 'If you're out to avenge the death of a loved one, you're not going to pre-advertise on the Web. You want the guy dead. Why take the chance that someone can find out ahead of time and stop you? Vigilantes are on a holy mission; what's happening here is some kind of sick game-playing.'

  Gino thought about that for a minute, then stuck his lips out as far as they would go. 'Well, gee, Leo, thanks a whole hell of a lot. There you go, popping a real pretty fantasy bubble once again, trashing one of my more brilliant theories. So if it's not pissed-off survivors, and it's not a single killer, then the victims aren't going to have anything in common. So what the hell are we looking for?'

  'Damned if I know. But we're going to keep looking until we find it.'

  Gino turned his attention back to Tommy. 'Did you print out complete files on all the victims?'

  'Hey, I'm your man, of course I did. Everything's in there.' He pointed to an enormous box sitting by his door.

  Gino's jaw went slack. 'You've gotta be kidding me. That box is bigger than my first house.'

  * * *

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chief Elias Frost had been sitting in the corner of the tiny ICU cubicle since Marian had gotten out of surgery. The nurses had tried to kick him out; even a couple of well- intentioned doctors; but he was having none of that.

  'She won't be able to talk,' the doctors told him.

  You said she moved her hands.'

  'That's correct. There's no paralysis.'

  'Then maybe she can write.'

  'Chief Frost, if she wakes up at all within the next forty- eight hours, it's going to be a miracle.'

  'Then I'll wait for a miracle.'

  He'd seen a few of those in ICU rooms just like this one over his twenty-odd years on the force. No reason he couldn't see another one. Especially this one.

  Her last name was Brandemeyer, on loan from the useless piece of crap she'd married when marijuana and motorcycles were more of a magnet than a skinny kid who wanted to be a cop. She'd dumped the garbage when he started hitting her, but kept the name because there was a daughter. But he never did think of her with a last name. Just Marian. A single-name person, like Elvis or Cher.

  No way in the world he could have recognized her face. It was all swollen and mottled from the surgery. But they had her hands outside the sheet, and he would have known them anywhere. Lord knows he should have; he'd held them often enough when they were an item in high school. Going steady is what they called it then, back when Medford only had one high school and everybody knew everybody else.

  He looked at his watch and marked the thirteenth hour of his vigil. When he looked up again he had one of those horror-movie moments when the eyes of the dead person in the coffin suddenly open, and you think you'll have a heart attack right there in your seat with popcorn all over your lap.

  Get a grip, Frost. You're so tired you can hardly see straight, and you've been looking at her too long, that's all. Willing her to live and waiting for her to die, and now your eyes are playing tricks. Look away, slow down the heart, take some deep breaths.

  He did all that, but when he looked at her again, Marian's eyes were still open and staring.

  Oh, Jesus, please, no…

  He tiptoed over to her bedside, which was really stupid, after all the loud talking he'd done in the past hours, trying to wake her up. Why do you try to wake up people who are unconscious and try not to wake up people who were dead?

  And then she blinked.

  The doctor and nurses shooed him out while they did whatever it was you did when someone who was supposed to die decides to give it another shot. 'Two minutes for you, two minutes for the daughter,' the doctor told him when they were finished.

  Frost went back to her bedside and touched her hand for the first time in over twenty years. 'You're in the hospital and you're going to be okay' - he told her the things he knew she would want to know immediately. 'Alissa is doing all right, but she was exhausted. I made her stretch out on a sofa in the waiting room for a while. I'll go get her.'

  Marian winced when she tried to move her head, then raised her right forefinger.

  It broke his heart watching her struggle to lift that single finger as if it weighed a million pounds. You don't want me to get her?'

  Frost's heart skipped a beat when she moved the finger a little more. He pulled out his notebook, laid it at her side, and put a pen in her hand.

  In any hospital he'd ever been in, the Intensive Care Unit waiting room made the rest of the place look like a sci-fi bus stop, and this one was no different. No dinky cubicles with plastic chairs here. Soft furniture in gentle colors, carpet underfoot, lamps on real wood tables instead of that crappy fluorescent lighting that made everyone look half- dea
d. They had food and drinks on a long table with a cloth, televisions and computers, books and magazines, and a lot of plants. The plants always made him feel good, until he started thinking that they might live a lot longer than anybody in ICU. Families in crisis mode had long, agonizing waits in places like this, and someone had put a lot of thought into making it easier.

  Alissa was curled on her side on a green sofa with little white dots. She was pretty like her mother, fresh-faced like her mother used to be before life wore her down. Frost laid a gentle hand on her shoulder and whispered her name. 'Your mother's awake.'

  She was awake instantly, on her feet, hugging him hard, and he reminded himself not to make too much of that. People were always hugging people in places like this.

  He waited until the glass door had closed behind her before he went to a phone, pulled his notebook out of his pocket, and flipped it open. Marian had managed only three letters in faint, wavering print: 'ENG.'

  'Ginny, it's Ethan.'

  Dead silence on the line, and Ethan knew what that was about. Nobody thought Marian would get through the first night, let alone the second, and everyone at the office had been dreading this call.

  'It's okay, Ginny, she's still with us. And she woke up, which is a good sign, but it's still touch and go.'

  'Oh thank God. I was afraid you were going to say-'

  'I know. Listen, who's on the desk today?'

  'Theo.'

  Chief Frost rubbed at his face. Theo was two weeks on the job and had about three whiskers on his whole face. 'Anybody else?'

  'Just me, and I've got every light on the board blinking. The press is driving me nuts. So you want to talk to him or not?'

  Yeah, I guess.'

  Theo had a spindly little frame and the face of a twelve- year-old boy, but a voice that boomed like he had an amp plugged into his chest. He could probably scare a criminal to death as long as they never saw him. 'What do you need, Chief?'

  'Marian woke up…' 'GREAT!'

  Frost winced and held the phone a little further from his ear. 'Anyway, she managed to write down three letters. E, N, G. Could be the beginning of a last name, a first name, maybe initials, I don't have a clue. Check with the people she works with at the bar and the diner, see if it means anything to them. If you don't get anywhere on that track, hit the phone books, the computer, whatever you can think of.'

  'Will do. Did you ask the daughter?'

  'I will. She's in with her mother now. I'll call you back if she has anything for us. If not, keep working it.'

  'No problem. Uh, have you been watching the tube this morning…?'

  The question was so out of left field Frost almost hung up on him.

  '… because, the thing is, there was this attack on another waitress in Wisconsin last night. Tied her up, knocked her around, then came at her with a knife, kind of like what happened to Marian. I thought maybe it might be worth a call to that FBI agent who put us on to the scene in the first place to see if there's any connection.'

  Frost took a breath. 'Son of a bitch, Theo, you may have some cop in you.'

  'Yes sir. You want his number?'

  'Oh. Yeah. Thanks.'

  Alissa came out before he could place the call, and he spent some time talking to her before he showed her what Marian had written. She stared sad little holes through those shaky, barely formed letters, and nearly wept when she finally shook her head. 'I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I don't know anybody with a first or last name that begins with ENG. I know all her friends and the people she works with. But you know what the traffic is like at the diner and the bar. It could have been a customer she never mentioned.'

  'Maybe. We're checking on that right now.'

  Like any human being on the planet, Alissa's eyes were drawn to the television in the waiting room. Didn't matter if you were in a sports bar, an airport, or even a hospital, Svengali lived in pixels these days, and if there was a screen around, it didn't take long before everybody's attention was drawn to it. Personally, Frost hated that you couldn't get away from the damn things. He'd gone to Europe once, gotten out of a taxi at an airport where about a thousand people were standing with bags in hand before they went into the terminal, all staring up at a screen the size of an old drive-in movie. There was nothing really interesting about it - just a bunch of rockers in a music video that sounded like cars crashing - but everyone seemed hypnotized by the image. They just stood motionless in front of the thing, no one talking, no one interacting, all looking up, oblivious to anything around them. That had creeped him out big time. Reminded him of Soylent Green or one of those other futuristic movies where everyone lived in some kind of a weird zombie state, as if the brains had been sucked right out of their heads.

  But maybe it wasn't such a bad thing to be mindless in an ICU waiting room; to get a brief respite from the bad thoughts and fears that kept you just on this side of screaming. Alissa looked almost vapid, which was about as close to serenity as she was going to get for a while.

  She made a soft noise in her throat, and Frost looked at the TV. They were showing a full screen of one of those nonspecific police sketches that always end up looking like somebody you know.

  'What is it?'

  'Nothing. That man looks a little like one of my teachers, is all.'

  'How much like him?'

  She gave him a sheepish smile. 'Not much. The mouth, a little.'

  Frost tipped his head and looked at the guy. 'Looks like Owen Wilson to me.'

  'I'm going to go back in and sit with Mom now, okay?'

  Frost didn't answer. He was just another automaton in front of a television, mouth-breathing like an idiot while he read the crawl line under the sketch that identified it as the attacker of the Wisconsin waitress Theo had told him about. 'Alissa?'

  'Yes?'

  'What's your teacher's name?'

  'Mr. Huttinger.'

  'First name?'

  Alissa pursed her lips as she tried to remember. 'Cliff, I think… no, Clinton. That was it. Clinton Huttinger.'

  Frost kept his disappointment to himself. Why couldn't it have been Engleburton Huttinger, or something like that? 'Okay.'

  'He was the best English teacher I ever had, actually. A really super guy.'

  After she went back to her mother's room, Chief Frost tried to talk himself out of jumping to conclusions because he wanted an answer so damn bad, but all he kept seeing was his own high school report cards with all the classes abbreviated to three letters because the space was too small.

  He had Theo back on the phone within minutes. 'Go, Chief.'

  'ENG might be an abbreviation for English.'

  'You think the guy's a Brit?'

  'Just listen, Theo. Don't repeat anything I say out loud. I don't want anyone in the office or out of the office getting wind of this, because I'm going on my gut here and nothing else, and I don't feel like trashing the life of someone who might be a decent guy.'

  'Got it, Chief. Go ahead.'

  'There's an English teacher at the high school…' 'Ah. English. ENG.'

  'Right. Name of Clinton Huttinger. I need his photo and five other similars for a spread. Don't let anybody see what you're doing, just put the package together and get over to the hospital as soon as you can.'

  Frost waited in the downstairs lobby, facing the big glass doors, but he heard Theo coming long before he saw him. Didn't matter how well you packed and settled your belt if you were as rail-thin as Theo. Damn thing banged on his bony hips, and handcuffs and light and everything else clattered with every step. He sat down next to his Chief and pulled the photo spread out of a large envelope.

  'Fast work, Theo, and it looks good. Which one is he?'

  Theo pointed.

  'Jesus. He looks like an altar boy.'

  'Actually, he was. Also Teacher of the Year and voted students' favorite past three years in a row.'

  'Is there a sheet on him?'

  Theo snorted. 'Sort of. He ran into his elderly neighbor's burnin
g house to save her cat. The officer on site wrote him a warning on interfering with fire fighters.'

  'Terrific. I picked a hero.'

  'Hey. A lot of people thought Ted Bundy was Mr. Wonderful.'

  Yeah, I guess. I've got a nurse, a doctor, Alissa, and you for witnesses when we show the spread to Marian. It's going to be tight in there, but I want this covered seven ways from Sunday in case we get anything. By the book, every second. Let's go.'

  It was worse than tight when they all crowded into Marian's tiny room, because everyone had to stand at the head of the bed, where they could see the silent identification if it happened.

  Marian looked at Frost, then at the photo spread, then back at Frost. He felt his heart fall to his stomach when he saw a tear fall from the corner of her eye. He'd been way out in left field with this leap, and way off base. He'd let her down, and he wondered if he'd ever get over that.

  Then he watched her finger, stronger now than when she fumbled with the pen and paper earlier, but still wavering as it moved slowly, but certainly, to the photo of Clinton Huttinger.

  * * *

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The problem was that Grace's brain had fallen off the genetic assembly line before they'd installed an off switch. Annie, Roadrunner, and Harley all had some sort of mindless activity where their brains literally seemed to shut down in a kind of weird living death, which gave them respite from the frenetic mental gymnastics required in programming. Grace's brain just kept working like the Energizer Bunny, and the only way she could blank out the endlessly repeating lines of programming language was to focus that laser attention on something else she was passionate about.

  Now, this was simple. Basic. Look at the artichokes. Assess the green, the darker tinge at the edge of the leaves that screamed no, not perfect, move on. And then you find the mother lode, fresh off the truck, firm leaves lightened at the tip by the good California sun, drops of liquid crystal when you pushed your thumbnail into the flesh. Perfection.

  Grace was a million miles away from her computer, totally focused on smelling Italian parsley, elephant garlic, waving her arms over vine-ripened tomatoes like a Jewish mother at Shabbat, pulling the aroma to her nose.