by P. J. Tracy
“That’s not funny.”
“I wasn’t trying to be funny. It really does say so in the police manual.”
She tightened her lips and he waited for all the colored water to run out, surprised when it didn’t. “Fine. Then I’ll harass you. Let’s get out of here so I can get started.”
He felt his mouth move into one of those Harrison Ford shit-eating-grin looks. Here he was in a nearly empty building with a woman in a red dress he’d wanted since she’d stood in front of him two years ago, shoving her application in his face, and she was seducing him. Women probably did that to Harrison Ford all the time. No wonder he looked like that.
“You’re not going to catch any bad guys here tonight anyway.”
The shit-eating grin slipped away. She’d waved his little sheriff’s star in front of him without even realizing what she was doing. “Well, that’s the thing,” he sighed, getting up and gathering papers and folders and photos that were spread all over his desk, stuffing them into the box that had become the Kleinfeldt file. “I’m going to Minneapolis tonight.”
She was silent for a beat, and he felt the change in her like a sudden drop in barometric pressure. Woman to deputy, all business, just like that. “What happened?”
He hefted the box under one arm and grabbed his coat from the back of his chair. “I’ve got to go to the evidence room and then get going. It’s a long drive.” He flipped off the lights, closed and locked the door to his office, then headed downstairs. She was hot on his heels.
“It’s the same guy, isn’t it?” she needled him, trotting in her little high heels to keep up. “The Monkeewrench Killer is our guy.”
“The Monkeewrench Killer? Where’d you hear that?”
“That’s the media moniker. And he’s our guy, right?”
“Maybe. They got a .22 slug from the Mall of America shooting this afternoon, enough rifling to run a comparison with the one we pulled out of Mrs. Kleinfeldt.”
She kept firing questions at him, oblivious to Cleaton looking up from where he was ogling Melissa in the dispatch booth, his jaw dropping when he got a look at Sharon in a red dress. Why had Minneapolis PD called the Catholic boarding school? What were they looking for? Was the killer doing any creative carving on his victims over there? Were they getting any forensics help from the scenes, and, bizarrely, what did Detective Magozzi sound like?
He told her everything they had, which wasn’t much, including the fact that Magozzi sounded like a nice enough guy who was just about at the end of his rope.
“It makes perfect sense,” she said as they went down the tiled steps to the basement.
“What do you mean?”
She was excited, walking fast, talking fast, ahead of him now in the narrow hall, heading for the wire mesh door at the end. “The Kleinfeldts were his first; the people he really wanted to kill. That one was personal. Hence the crosses in the chests.”
Halloran raised his brows at “hence.” He couldn’t remember anyone ever saying that word aloud before.
“That MO didn’t transfer to his next victims, because he doesn’t care about them, doesn’t even think of them as people. It isn’t personal anymore. It’s just business.”
“Business? What kind of business?” He unlocked the mesh gate and pushed it open.
“Monkey business.” She wrinkled her nose when he didn’t laugh at her joke. “I don’t know what kind of business, but he’s got a goal in mind, something very specific he wants to accomplish.”
“The feeling in Minneapolis is he’s just doing this for fun. Playing the game, beating everybody.” He set the box on a table and fumbled on the wall for the light switch. Fluorescents flickered to white life overhead and revealed rows of metal shelves holding boxes of evidence from cases that went back into the last century. Kingsford County never threw anything away.
Sharon walked straight to the nearest shelf, pulled out a small box, and checked the label on the plastic bag inside. “But why play the game at all? If shooting people in the head was enough to give him his jollies, he could just off anybody, anywhere. Don’t you see?” She walked over and tucked the bag in Halloran’s breast pocket, closed the flap, and pressed her hand against it. “He’s gone to a lot of trouble to follow this game very precisely, and he’s taking some big risks. Like at the mall today. He had to know that place was crawling with cops, just waiting for him. Not exactly a killer’s ideal venue. And still he did it. Why?”
Her hand was still pressed flat against his breast pocket, and he wondered if she could feel his heartbeat, much too fast and hard for a man standing still. “Maybe he wants to make the cops look bad.”
“Maybe. Then you’ve got to ask, what’s he got against cops? What’s the history? Because there is a reason for this, no matter how twisted it seems to the rest of us, and when you figure out the reason, you’re just a step away.”
“You learn all this in those psych classes?”
She smiled up at him. “Among other things. Are you ready to go?”
“Uh-huh.” But he didn’t move, because if he did, she’d take her hand away from his pocket and he figured his heart might get cold.
“I’ve got to make a quick stop at my place, change into a uniform.”
“You’re not going.”
“Of course I am. It’s the middle of the night, it’s a six-, seven-hour drive. You’ll fall asleep and run into a tree.”
He thought about that for a minute. “I’ll take Bonar.”
She jerked her hand away from his chest, took a step back, and glared at him, eyes outflashing the lights overhead. “Oh, now that’s great, Halloran. Thanks a lot. I’ve worked this case just as hard as Bonar has, so what’s the problem? What is it? Afraid showing up with a female deputy will make you look bad to the big macho city dicks?”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Halloran had her by the upper arms and up against the wall before she took her next breath, his face so close to hers his vision blurred, his body flat and pressing hard until he felt every single thing she had under the little red dress. “What I’m afraid of”—he talked with his mouth right against hers and swore he tasted colored water—“is that I’ll never get to Minneapolis if I take you along.”
He kissed her for a long time—years, or maybe three seconds—and then her mouth moved and opened under his and he had to throw his hands against the wall on either side of her just to stay upright.
He figured he had two choices: take her right there against the wall in the Kingsford County evidence room, or drive all the way across the state in the middle of the night to chase a killer and keep his job.
He’d just decided that there wasn’t a man alive who needed any job that bad when she pushed him away. Her eyes were wide and she was breathing through her mouth. “Damn it, Mike, I nearly fainted.”
Here came the Harrison Ford shit-eating grin again. He would have given a million bucks to be back in high school right then, just so he could go to the locker room tomorrow morning and tell the guys, hey, I kissed a girl last night and she nearly fainted.
“You’d better go.”
He moved into her again. “I’m not in that much of a hurry.”
She ducked under his arms and quick-stepped away from him to the doorway, her skirt swirling, showing knee and thigh and the lacy top of a nylon. “Neither am I,” she said, looking right at him. “That’s why you’d better go.”
He was so dumbfounded that she could just walk away from him like that, click those little heels all the way down the hall and then trot up the stairs, that it never occurred to him to think that she had given in too easily about riding along to Minneapolis.
An hour later, Halloran and Bonar were on Highway 29 heading west, a thermos of Marjorie’s coffee between them, two full cups steaming in the holders. Bonar was driving the first leg with the apparent intention of getting it over with as soon as possible. He had the cruise set at eighty and the roof lights flashing.
“Never thought you’d be
in this much of a hurry to get to the big city.”
“I’m not. I hate cities. Smog, crime, parking meters. Cities suck. But I am going to make it to Eat ‘n Run Truck Stop in Five Corners before it closes. Best damn roast beef and gravy in the state.”
“I thought you and Marjorie went to Hidden Haven for dinner.”
“That was hours ago.”
“You can’t eat roast beef and gravy in a car.”
“I can eat roast beef and gravy on a stick, but the truth is, I was thinking of you. Sharon said you didn’t eat dinner.”
“When did you talk to Sharon?”
“Between jumping out of Marjorie’s bed and running to my place to change into a uniform.”
“She called you? Why?”
“To tell me to stop and get you something to eat. You should probably marry that girl.”
“I’m too young to get married.”
“You’re damn near too old to reproduce.”
“We haven’t even had a date yet.”
“Do that first.” Bonar swerved to avoid the remains of raccoon on the road. “I heard the ‘yet,’ by the way.”
Halloran slid down in the seat and closed his eyes.
“I went by Danny’s folks’ tonight to pay my respects.”
Halloran opened his eyes.
“They said you were over there this morning. Drove them to the funeral home, helped them make all the arrangements.”
“I had some time.”
“Bullshit you did. You’re a nice guy, Mike. Suck it up.”
Halloran closed his eyes again. Yeah. That’s what he was, all right. A nice guy. Helped the grieving parents of a kid he’d gotten killed get ready to put him in the ground. What a prince.
“They said the funeral’s Monday.”
Halloran nodded. “Danny’s sister is in France somewhere. She couldn’t get back until Sunday.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been to a Monday funeral.”
“I wish to God we didn’t have to go to this one.”
Chapter 36
Diane hurried away from a cluster of admirers when Grace, Harley, Roadrunner, and Annie entered the art gallery, gliding toward them on a cloud of white silk.
She embraced them all, then took both of Grace’s hands in hers and stepped back, smiling. “You dressed up.”
“Only for you.” Grace smiled back.
“Huh?” Harley frowned at Grace’s trademark black jeans, T-shirt, and duster. “What are you talking about? That’s what she wears every day.”
“Harley, you are such a cretin,” Diane scolded him.
“I keep telling him that,” Annie said.
“She’s wearing the Moschino T-shirt,” Diane pointed out. “And if that isn’t dressing up I don’t know what is.”
Harley leaned over and peered at Grace’s T-shirt. “Looks like Fruit Of The Loom to me.”
Diane shook her head in bemused exasperation, then looked from one to the other. “You didn’t have to come tonight. I know how bad things have been.”
“Sugar, are you out of your mind? Have we ever missed one of your openings?” Annie asked. “Besides, this is just what we needed.”
Roadrunner nodded. “Yeah. Especially after the thing at the mall today.”
Diane took his hand and squeezed it. “Just let that all go for a couple hours. And I have something that I think will help.” She raised her hand and a uniformed waiter came over with a tray of champagne.
“I love this woman,” Harley said, taking a glass from the tray and draining it, then grabbing another. “Where’s that sack-of-shit husband of yours?”
Diane waved a hand vaguely toward the crowd at the buffet table. “You know Mitch. Doing what he does best. When I left he was selling the most expensive piece here to some poor man who bought his last painting in a gas station parking lot.” She sighed and glanced fondly over at Mitch. “It’s distracting him, anyway. He needed that.”
She turned back to them with a regretful smile. “I have to go mingle now, but please stay as long as you’d like. Eat, drink, be merry, and leave when you have to. It means the world that you all came tonight.”
She held Grace back when the others made an immediate beeline for the buffet table. “How are you holding up? This has to be worse for you than anyone else.”
Grace reached out and gave her a hug. “I get by with a little help from my friends,” she quoted the Beatles. “Just like always.”
Gino and Magozzi parked in a pay-box lot and walked the last block in the cold, looking like a couple of B-movie mobsters in their flapping trench coats.
The Acton-Schlesinger Gallery was housed on the top floor of yet another renovated warehouse very much like the Monkeewrench building, and only a few blocks away. A brass plaque at the entrance of the building informed visitors that this had once housed a clothing manufacturer that specialized in men’s undergarments.
Gino was sullen and defensive as he and Magozzi entered the vacuous downstairs foyer, no doubt anticipating the pretentious snobbery and general nostril-gazing he was certain he would be subjected to from the crowd upstairs.
“With that kind of attitude, you are going to get snubbed,” Magozzi admonished him.
“You just wait and see, Leo. I’ve been to stuff like this before with Angela and if you aren’t pale as a ghost, emaciated, and dressed head to toe in black, they won’t give you the time of day.”
“You’re going to see what you want to see,” Magozzi sighed. “Me, I’m just looking forward to seeing what kind of woman married a neurotic mess like Cross.”
The gallery space was vast and spartan, with gleaming blond floors and vaulted bare-beamed ceilings that glowed with soft track lighting. Abstract art hung from steel partitions that were arranged in labyrinthine fashion throughout the space. Elegant patrons with elevated chins and ennui-filled eyes milled through the maze like well-dressed rats, sipping pink champagne from crystal stemware.
An attractive young woman dressed in the requisite black uniform greeted them with a tray of champagne flutes. Her face had a fresh innocence to it despite the generous application of white powder, and the smile was demure, although the effect was mostly lost behind blood-red lipstick. To her credit, she didn’t bat an eye at their rumpled suits that were beginning to look slept in. “Welcome, gentlemen. May I offer you some champagne?”
Magozzi and Gino looked at each other. The prospect of an alcoholic beverage had them both salivating.
“Billecart-Salmon,” she enticed.
“I guess that’s supposed to be good, huh?” Gino asked her.
“Better than good.”
He looked back at Magozzi. “We on duty?” he whispered.
Magozzi bit his lower lip. “Not in an official capacity, I don’t think.”
Gino beamed at the young woman and took two flutes. “You are an angel from heaven. Bless you, my child.”
Her demure smile broadened to a grin. She seemed grateful to have found two patrons who wouldn’t have apoplexy if she broke character. “Anytime. I’ll keep my eye out for empties.”
“You know, this place ain’t so bad after all,” Gino said, smacking his lips and surveying the surroundings. “Besttasting champagne I ever had, even if it is pink.”
Magozzi savored the glowing warmth of carbonated alcohol hitting his bloodstream fast. The feeling was vaguely familiar to him—he’d experienced it once or twice about a thousand years ago—it was called relaxation. He took another sip. “I suppose we should make the rounds.”
Gino drained his glass. “I like it here on the periphery. Let’s just stay here and get bombed, let Halloran take over when he gets into town.”
They indulged their wishful thinking for another minute, then entered the fray, pausing briefly at the first wall of Diane Cross’s paintings, all distinctively styled black-and-whites like the abstract in Mitch Cross’s office, and the ones hanging in MacBride’s living room.
Magozzi nodded to himself, understandin
g that marriage and friendship would explain the display of such works, much as a parent hangs the crayoned renderings of a beloved child on the refrigerator, but not understanding at all an entire exhibit of such careless starkness in a gallery as pretigious as this.
He apologized mentally to Vermeer and van Gogh, masters of light and color, for a world that now paid homage to chic over genius.
The Monkeewrench crew wasn’t hard to spot in the sea of sleek fashionistas. Grace MacBride and Harley Davidson, engaged in a private conversation at the moment, most closely resembled the gallery’s majority of denizens. Both of them could have passed for either patrons or artists, she in her black duster, he encased in enough black leather to dress a rodeo.
Annie stood a few feet away, coquettishly deflecting the attentions of a handsome young man in a vintage tuxedo. Somehow she’d found the time and change of wardrobe to magically transform herself into a semi-formal butterfly adorned in diaphanous, hand-painted chiffon. Magozzi remembered what Espinoza had said about her clothing budget, and he believed it.
Roadrunner, obviously suffering from sensory overload, hovered alone against a far wall in his perennial Lycra—formal black for this occasion—shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot. He offered them a weak wave, then went back to his shifting.
Gino shook his head in genuine sympathy. “Poor guy looks like an antelope in a pack of lions.”
“Where’s Mitch?”
Gino didn’t hear him. “Annie is the only one who looks like she’s having fun,” he sighed.
“I think she always has fun. So Mitch—he’s the only missing person.”
Gino tore his eyes away from Annie and cocked a thumb toward a linen-covered buffet table groaning under the weight of sushi and floral arrangements. “There he is.”
Magozzi saw him then, next to a tall blond woman in a white silk gown. There was no question she was the artist—adoring fans clustered around her, vying for audience, and she graciously attended them all while managing to cosset her husband like a cherished pet.
So that was Diane Cross. The artist, the star, and obviously a doting wife. Not a ten-star stunner, maybe, but attractive in that wholesome, athletic sort of way so many Midwesterners aspired to.
