Monkeewrench

by P. J. Tracy

  “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 Kops—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 Kops,” 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.”

  Chapter 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 mystery. 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 t
he 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.

  Magozzi didn’t waste any time with polite preambles or introductions. “Ms. MacBride, you have our curiosity and attention.”

  Grace didn’t waste time with niceties, either. She took a step forward and delivered her information abruptly, with all the emotion of one of her computers spitting out data. “I received an e-mail last night with a memo line that read, ‘From the Killer.’”

  There were a few soft snickers from the detectives. MacBride waited them out. “The message itself was much more creative, a clever modification of the game’s opening graphics screen.” She looked at Magozzi. “Has everyone seen what the opening graphics page is supposed to look like?”

  Magozzi nodded. “Part of their handouts. ‘Want to play a game?,’ right?”

  “Right.” She returned her attention to the room. “The sender manipulated those graphics so instead it said, ‘You’re not playing.’”

  Magozzi felt a little chill creep up his spine. Patrol Sergeant Freedman dispelled it almost immediately with an impatient bass rumble.

  “You’re probably going to get a million of those, now that the media’s got the Monkeewrench connection. Somebody’s just yanking your chain.”

  Grace nodded at the big black cop. “That’s what we thought last night. But another message came this morning.” She took a deep breath and exhaled silently. Magozzi supposed that was the Grace MacBride version of an attack of nerves. “This one said, ‘Wilbur bit his hand. No accounting for taste. Are you ready to play yet?’”

  No one in the room moved. No one even blinked.

  Grace looked from face to face. “Well? Was that his name? The victim on the paddle wheeler?”

  Gino pushed away from the wall. “Yeah, that was his name. And it wasn’t released to the press. Neither was the bite mark. Which is real interesting. Looks like you people have information only the shooter would know.”

  Grace nodded woodenly. “Then there’s no doubt. The e-mails are from the killer.”

  “Or one of you is the killer,” Gino was quick to suggest, “sending yourself e-mails, coming to play with the stupid cops.… One scenario’s as good as the other.”

  A soft, disgruntled murmuring rose from the Monkeewrench crew. Grace shot them a quick glance and they went silent.

  “You have copies of the e-mails?” Magozzi asked.

  She shook her head. “They were programmed to erase after they were opened.”

  “How convenient,” said Gino. “No way to trace them. No way to prove you didn’t send them to yourself.”

  Grace gave him a long, steady look, but there was an angry quaver in her voice. “You’re a typical cop, Detective Rolseth, with a typical cop’s tunnel vision.”

  Gino emitted a long-suffering sigh and looked at the ceiling.

  “You’ve already decided that one of us is guilty, and you just can’t get past that. But you’d better. Because if you’re wrong, and you’d better believe that you are, while you’re wasting your resources investigating us, someone out there is just going to keep killing.”

  Gino started to open his mouth, but Chief Malcherson raised one finger to keep him silent. “I’m Chief Malcherson, Ms. MacBride, and I can assure you that this is a broad investigation. We’re not focusing on any particular suspects at this point.”

  This time the snickers came from the Monkeewrench crew, who knew better.

  “Let’s just go with this for a minute,” said Magozzi. “So the killer’s contacting you, egging you on. He wants you to play the game. What the hell does that mean?”

  Grace shrugged. “We don’t know. We’re guessing he wants us to try to find him. Hiding is no fun unless someone is looking for you. So that’s what we’ve been doing. The e-mails themselves may have disappeared, but not the log. We spent all night tracing the first one. And bear in mind that although we did trace it to a specific location, we believe this location is false. The sender has a relatively high level of computer proficiency and we all agree that he literally drew us a cyber map that routed us there, when in all likelihood, it was actually sent from somewhere very nearby.”

  Tommy Espinoza stood and introduced himself then, and asked a series of technical questions that might as well have been in Greek, as far as Magozzi was concerned. MacBride and her clan were duly impressed with Tommy’s knowledge and after five minutes of Q & A, they were deep in the midst of techno-geek bonding.

  It was Gino who finally interrupted, making no attempt to keep the irritation out of his voice. “Look, I’m just tickled pink you’re all hitting it off, but can you postpone your little lovefest until you tell the rest of us where the hell that e-mail supposedly came from?”

  Magozzi nodded. “Tommy, after we wrap up here, you can take them to an interview room and get a full briefing on the computer angle.”

  Tommy gave Magozzi a chagrined smile. “Sorry, Leo, Gino.”

  “It came from a private Catholic school in upstate New York,” Grace said.

  “Saint Peter’s School of the Holy Cross, Cardiff, New York,” Roadrunner put in.

  The room was silent.

  “We were hoping that the location would have some significance to you and the investigation, because it certainly has no significance to any of us.” Grace reached deep into the pocket of her duster, pulled out a folded slip of white notebook paper, and passed it to Magozzi. “Here’s the school’s phone number. You won’t find him there, but it might be a clue, intentional or otherwise.”

  Magozzi unfolded the paper and stared at the precise, draftsman-quality script that could only belong to Grace MacBride. “We’ll check it out.”

  “You know,” Louise offered, “the first vic was a seminary student. Maybe he went there.”

  “Maybe,” Magozzi said. “Or maybe we can match a name with someone from the registration list.” It was such a long shot he almost laughed out loud, but he figured that would be bad for morale. Or whatever was left of it. Things were just never that easy.

  “If he continues to make contact,” Grace went on, “the chances of tracing him back to his real location improve. The mistake most hackers make is the arrogant belief that nobody plays the game better, that there isn’t a chance they’ll get caught. So they keep hacking into the same s
ites longer than they should, tempting fate, leaving little cyber footprints, and eventually someone finds them and follows them. It doesn’t matter how good you are. There’s always, always somebody better.” She looked at Roadrunner, who nodded, and then at Tommy, who smiled at her.

  It was the same with serial killers, Magozzi thought. They often started to feel invincible when they literally got away with murder. They got arrogant, maybe a little bored, so they upped the stakes, left more clues. A lot of serial homicides were solved for that very reason.

  Grace sighed. “You will have our full cooperation on this, of course.” The offer was genuine, but the tone in which she said it made it clear that her cooperation was a reluctant consortium with the enemy. “We’ll interface with Detective Espinoza on the technical aspects, and until we receive a new message, we’ll continue to attempt to trace back to the current message’s true origin.”

  “And you’ll keep us informed of any new messages you receive,” Gino said. It was a command, not a question.

  “Absolutely.”

  “You get an e-mail at four a.m., I want a call by four-oh-one. Can we route your e-mail to Tommy so he has instantaneous access to any message you might receive?”

  Grace nodded at Tommy. “We’ll work something out. We’ll set up an on-line link. I’ll give you my password.”

  “Wait a minute,” Magozzi interrupted. “Your password? Are you saying these e-mails were sent to you, personally?”

  Grace MacBride hesitated only a fraction of a second. “Yes.”

  “Not the company.”

  “Generally, to the company. Specifically directed to my mailbox.”

  Louise Washington sucked air in through her teeth. “Whoa. You have any enemies, Ms. MacBride?”

  “Outside of this room? No, I don’t think so.”

  Her crew smiled at that, even Mitch Cross. So did a few of the detectives.

  Chief Malcherson gave her one of his political nice smiles. “You have no enemies in this room, Ms. MacBride. No enemies in this department. If our questioning seems a bit curt, it’s only because we’re under a great deal of pressure with this case. I’m sure you understand.”