by P. J. Tracy
In the next instant, the wire started to come down over her head, but she was ready for it. She flung her arms over her shoulders and her thumbs found the man’s eyes, pushing inward until he started screaming. She kicked her chair back into his stomach, jumped to her feet, and ran toward the loading dock doors.
TWENTY-SIX
Magozzi felt a numb ache buzzing through every cell in his body as he crawled into bed after almost forty sleepless hours, a lot of it spent on his feet under a cruelly hot sun. He’d lost count of the days, and the details of the crime scenes had started bleeding together in the undulating plasma of his semimelted brain. McLaren and Freedman had finally kicked him and Gino out of the office at eight o’clock, begging for mercy.
You two smell like week-old gym bags, you’ve got worse tempers than a couple of wet bees, and your collective brain power is hovering somewhere between sea slug and plankton. Go home. Shower. Get some sleep.
McLaren had been absolutely right, there was a tipping point when it came to sleep deprivation—when you started making bad decisions, or none at all—and he and Gino had probably surpassed that hours before they’d finally left City Hall. Besides, with all the cases almost through the bureaucratic maze to get joint-task-forced between Minneapolis and Saint Paul and staffed around the clock, they had a lot of new information coming in and fresh eyes and brains to process it. Brains that wouldn’t miss a gossamer thread of evidence that could break a case.
But as exhausted as he was, Magozzi couldn’t push away the leaden sense of hopelessness. They were the first line of defense for the people they’d taken an oath to protect and serve, and so far, they were being outsmarted by a psychopath, albeit a very organized one. And beyond the hopelessness, there was white-hot anger that such a monster existed at all.
There was another monster in this mix, too, and that was the media. Amanda White had essentially led the charge on the evening news, upping the ante from speculation to unilaterally proclaiming that there was almost certainly a twisted serial killer on the loose and he was spreading his net to Saint Paul. He could still hear her annoying, shrill voice as she did her best to incite fear and uncertainty in the masses.
There is still no official confirmation that the murder in Saint Paul’s Phalen Park early this morning is connected to Minneapolis’s unsolved murder yesterday, which also occurred in a park. But the presence of Minneapolis homicide detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth at the Saint Paul scene today is noteworthy and seems to speak volumes. What aren’t they telling us, and why?
Magozzi rolled over onto his side in disgust, jamming another pillow under his neck, trying to get comfortable in his unfamiliar bed in a house he now hated. He tried to mentally transport himself to the lake, where his new bed and only wonderful memories resided, but there was too much pollution in his mind to quite make it there.
He should never have turned on the TV tonight. And what pissed him off even more was the fact that Amanda White was right—she was just putting pieces together that were out there for anyone to see. The problem was she was making damn good and sure she scared the shit out of everybody in the process.
It took him a while, or maybe no time at all, to fall into a scattered sleep, his turbulent thoughts becoming twitchy dreams that made no sense. At ten o’clock, he woke up to a howling stomach, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten since breakfast.
He gave up on sleep for the time being, stumbled downstairs, and threw a frozen meal into the microwave. It smelled weird after the first minute, weirder after the second, so he wandered into his living room to let it complete its six-minute cycle, hoping it would smell better by the time it had finished cooking.
The living room, and the house for that matter, was not the same place it had been since his divorce from Heather. She’d taken most of the contents, but had happily relinquished the house after their divorce, and small wonder. Her salary as an attorney was so far above his he couldn’t even see it from here, and easily paid for her downtown condo with a view of the river and muscular young personal trainers who serviced the on-site gym, and probably Heather as well.
Bad Magozzi. Not nice.
He didn’t really harbor any ill will toward his philandering ex-wife, except when it came to her defending a lot of the dirtbags he broke his back to put in jail. They’d been a bad match, equally cheated by coming together, but Magozzi had come out of it smelling like roses, because Grace MacBride had come into his life.
Magozzi got up from the sofa when he heard the microwave ping, leaving his memories behind in the living room. His dinner still smelled weird, but he wolfed it down anyhow. Just as he was putting the last forkful of something pretending to be meat in his mouth, the phone rang.
Caller ID announced it was Gino. “Oh, shit,” he mumbled, then answered. “If this is anything other than a social call, I want you to hang up right now so I can go back to bed.”
“That’s exactly what I told McLaren when he called me from the scene of a fresh one. Six of spades.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
McLaren was waiting for Gino and Magozzi outside the boarded-up storefront of what was once Suds and Suds—a long-defunct Laundromat that used to serve cheap beer to bored clients so they could enjoy a buzz while they waited for their socks and underwear to dry. According to a posted sign, a gastropub-slash-microbrewery would be occupying the space in the fall. My, how things had changed here.
When this neighborhood had started to fray around the edges back in the early nineties, Suds and Suds had closed up, along with most other mom-and-pop businesses, leaving nothing but cheap rental units, a couple of sketchy bars, and a church mission that served the homeless. The area had languished forgotten over the years, until hipsters discovered the neighborhood. They were charmed by the low rent so close to downtown Minneapolis and the slightly dangerous, dingy bars where they could drink Grain Belt beer side by side with people who didn’t possess a philosophy degree, but did possess exotic jobs, like factory assembly line workers, janitors, and small-time criminals.
Now it was in full renaissance and a new bar, tapas restaurant, or boutique was opening up every month. There was even a shiny new CVS pharmacy and a high-end grocery store. There were still a few pimples on the rapidly clearing urban complexion, but overall it was a success story for everybody except the factory workers, the janitors, and the small-time criminals, who didn’t like microbrews, tapas, or the associated rising rents.
Tonight, this city block was shut down and bathed in a kaleidoscope of flashing blue-and-red lights that advertised something very bad had happened here. Dozens of officers crowded the street, manning barricades and taking statements from onlookers.
McLaren threw up his hands in what was maybe a greeting, an admonishment, or general frustration. “Jesus, it’s about time you guys got here.”
“We were here in twenty,” Gino growled. “Did you think we were going to teleport here or what?”
McLaren was unfazed by Gino’s grumpy hibernating-bear impersonation. “Yeah, well, twenty is about all it took for things to go downhill faster than a boulder. We’re gonna have company soon.”
“What kind of company?” Magozzi asked, dreading the answer.
“The FBI.”
“What the hell business do they have with this? They’re not in on our serial.”
“This has nothing to do with the possible serial angle, the Feds don’t even know about it yet. See, the vic was robbed. No personal effects, no identification. So we ran her prints and got nothing. A little while later, I get a call from Chief Malcherson, telling me and Eaton to play nice with our new friends when they show up.”
“That’s all he said?”
“That’s it. Until I mentioned the fact that this was maybe our serial and I’d called you guys in for a look, then he got quiet for a minute, said he’d get back to me.”
Gino wiped his bleary eyes, dragging
the bags under them farther down his face. “So the vic doesn’t have a criminal history, no prints on any open file, and yet the minute you ran them, the Feds were all over you. What do you bet she’s an agent?”
McLaren cocked his head. “That’s a decent assumption for a guy who hasn’t slept in two days.”
“I’ll do you one better, because I know exactly what’s going on. When the prints red-flagged with the FBI, our fondest friend, Special Agent in Charge Paul Shafer, called Malcherson, said he was taking over the hand with a federal trump card. No pun intended. Nothing Malcherson can do about it. But when he found out about the serial angle from you, he had to call Shafer back and let him know he wasn’t going to bend over on this without equal access to evidence, because we’ve got a butcher on the loose killing a woman a day and MPD’s ass is on the line big-time. Bet you anything Malcherson and Shafer are negotiating right now for an interdepartmental lovefest where we can all share evidence nicey-nicey. I rest my case.”
McLaren folded his arms across his chest. “You are one crafty, conniving fucker, Rolseth. You ever think about going into politics?”
“I’d shoot myself in the head first.”
“Johnny, you sound a little ambivalent about this being our guy,” Magozzi redirected.
“Right. I’ll show you why.” He waved his hand for them to follow him past the crime-scene tape and led them around the back of Suds and Suds to an empty parking lot. Weeds sprouted up in cracks in the pavement, and a rusty shopping cart was jammed against a pile of broken wooden pallets where Eaton Freedman was standing watch over the body, a colossal guardian of the dead.
Eaton nodded a morose greeting and stepped back to reveal the body of a woman wearing a bloody orange smock with a Global Foods logo on the left breast—the high-end grocery store that had opened up nearby a few years ago. But the blood wasn’t the result of any cutting on her torso, at least from what Magozzi could see. It looked like it had all seeped down from the precise, thin laceration around her neck. On the ground next to her was a six of spades.
“What in the hell?” Magozzi mumbled. “Nothing about this jibes except for the card. And even the card doesn’t jibe—it looks like it was tossed there as an afterthought.”
“Yeah, that’s what Eaton and I were trying to figure out. If it wasn’t for the card, I’d say hell no, this isn’t our guy, because nothing about this scene reads serial killer fantasy. First off, we’re clearly not in a park, and this woman wasn’t out jogging, she was a clerk at Global Foods, maybe on her way home from work. She’s blond, not brunette, she wasn’t strangled, she was garroted. No cutting on her torso, but check out her left wrist.” He pointed a flashlight, which revealed a deep, ragged cut. “It looks like somebody tried to hack it off. Just like Katya Smirnova, except Katya lost her hand, this one didn’t.”
Gino went down on his haunches for a closer look. “This is a damn mess, nothing planned or careful about it. It’s like a badly botched frame job.”
“Could be a copycat,” Eaton said. “We never leaked the card, but sometimes stuff gets out whether we want it to or not.”
“Two possibilities,” Magozzi said. “Either the info about the card got leaked and it is a copycat, or this is our man and for some reason, he totally broke from his fantasy. Which doesn’t make any sense. Serial killers are nothing if not predictable.”
McLaren shoved his hands in the pocket of his seersucker sport coat. “Or this was a rush job. Maybe something scared him off before he could finish. This is a busy area. Pretty stupid place to kill anybody if you ask me.”
Magozzi chewed his lower lip, as if his lip were somehow connected to the improved functionality of brain synapses. “Exactly. This kill was different from inception. So why here and why all the discrepancies in the MO?”
Eaton took a deep breath and looked away. “Maybe he had to kill her, for whatever reason. Like she made him somehow. She’s not his type, this venue isn’t his twisted little paradise, but he has no choice but to chase her down and shut her up. He tried to preserve his fantasy the best he could under the circumstances.”
Magozzi raised a brow at him. “I could buy that. Who found the body?”
“A guy who walks home from CVS every night after work. He’s in a squad giving preliminaries until we can get to him.”
Magozzi looked toward the street and saw two notable things: an FBI Forensics Unit pulling up and a tall man in a suit getting out of a sedan and crossing the crime-scene tape without MPD escort. “Malcherson’s here.”
“Damn right he is,” Gino said almost cheerfully, giving Eaton a nudge. “Listen up, greenhorn, that’s a leader for you right there. Not afraid to get in the trenches, not afraid to get his boots dirty when his men need some backup. And trust me, when the FBI gets involved, you need cover from an authority figure. You’ll need it other times, too, but just so you know, Malcherson’s always your man.”
Eaton nodded studiously. “Got it, Obi-Wan.”
The chief joined them with a curt nod and salutation, then studied the scene with a grim expression. Magozzi could only remember a couple of times when it had been necessary for the chief to be present at a crime scene. His demeanor never wavered from the unreadable stoicism that defined his personality, but beneath the cool exterior was a compassionate man and a former street cop and homicide detective who had devoted his life to stopping the kind of violence they were all looking at now.
He finally turned away. “Please, let’s step over here. I need to speak with you all in private before things get complicated.”
“Are we getting shut out, Chief?” Gino asked the minute they’d found a cozy little corner in the latticed shadow of a chain-link fence that separated the Suds and Suds lot from CVS.
“Not entirely. There will be full cooperation on this case between the MPD and the Bureau with shared and equal access to any related evidence. I assured Special Agent in Charge Shafer that he can rely on our full compliance, and he assured me of the same. We all have the same goal in mind, and that is to find the killer.”
“Sounds great,” McLaren said. “So what’s the caveat?”
“For the time being, you won’t pursue anything other than the physical evidence provided by the FBI’s forensic unit. Specifically, you are not to conduct any interviews or question anyone directly related to this case.”
Gino made an unpleasant sound. “You’ve gotta be kidding me. So we are getting shut out for all intents and purposes.”
Malcherson looked irritated. “It will be temporary.”
“Did Shafer tell you what’s more important than trying to find a serial killer who also happened to kill one of their agents?”
Malcherson’s expression remained still.
“Come on, Chief. Give us a little credit. The prints and the Feds suddenly storming the Bastille was a dead giveaway.”
“All I can tell you is this case relates to an ongoing, high-priority undercover operation. And Shafer had a very specific request—stay away from Global Foods.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Amanda White was sitting in a CVS pharmacy parking lot, enjoying the view. From her position, she could see every vehicle arriving at the crime scene, and it was starting to get very interesting. She knew it was a homicide from the get-go, but when Detectives Magozzi and Rolseth had shown up later, she knew it was also connected to the serial killer. And just now, Chief Malcherson had shown up in person, along with the FBI. There was gold here, she just had to figure out how to mine it.
Her stomach growled and she reached into the greasy McDonald’s bag on the passenger seat, then started shoving cold, limp fries into her mouth with an angry defiance directed at all the devoutly superficial people in her life who were constantly trying to repair her glaring imperfections. For her own good, of course.
Mom: You shouldn’t eat fried food, dear. It’s terrible for your complexion. Besid
es, it will make you fat, and where will you be then?
Bob, her producer: Love the new teeth, Amanda, but the camera adds ten pounds at least, so lose an extra five or so, ’kay?
Jenny, her hairdresser: What do you think about going blond, maybe add some extensions? You’ll feel so much sexier, and it’ll play great on TV. Have you gained weight?
God, the world was fucked up in so many ways. Childhood obesity was basically a pandemic now, so obviously not a lot of kids had moms anymore who told them they’d get fat and pimply and have no future if they ate fried food. At the same time, anorexia was still rampant. And what was worse? Diabetic kids who were too fat to run three feet without keeling over, or living skeletons who were too emaciated to run three feet without keeling over? And meanwhile, here she was, a skinny, neurotic, suggestible woman who was bingeing on fries in a car outside a pharmacy in a rugged part of town, watching the aftermath of somebody’s tragedy, waiting to capitalize on it for her own benefit. The scales of common sense, her own included, needed a serious recalibration.
The funny thing was, this felt right, being here tonight. Her whole life, she’d dreamed of being a hard-core investigative journalist, somebody who solved mysteries by digging deep and working people. She’d never wanted to be a television personality, never even considered it. And yet she’d allowed herself to be misdirected onto a path that was becoming harder and harder to justify—an okay-looking Iowa girl transformed into a media paper doll who talked for a living but didn’t have a voice.
Sometimes, as she spooled out preapproved, melodramatic speculations in front of the studio cameras, she felt marred, damaged, even. She felt that way when she looked at herself in the mirror, too. And maybe everybody around her felt the same way. Fake teeth and size two clothes didn’t buy you respect.
