Shoot to Thrill

by P. J. Tracy

  Grace grunted. “That dog assumes you always have food on your face.”

  Roadrunner covered the fifty feet from his workstation to the doorway in about ten strides. “You got my films, guys?”

  Magozzi and Gino just stared at him, speechless for a moment.

  “Jesus, Roadrunner,” Gino finally managed to eke out. “You’re wearing jeans.”

  The tall man’s Adam’s apple bobbed in embarrassment.

  “Leave him alone,” Harley bellowed across the room. “I’ve been trying to get him in real clothes for years and I don’t want you messing it up. Damn Lycra’s so hot we had to keep the air on arctic for him to survive up here while the rest of us got frostbite.”

  “Oh.” But Gino couldn’t stop staring.

  “You know what, Roadrunner?” Magozzi said. “That’s a really good look for you. Kind of Gary Cooper. Long, tall cowboy.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Here are the films you asked for.”

  “Oh, gee, thanks, this is going to get things rolling.” The long, tall cowboy hurried back to his desk, smiling.

  Harley gave Magozzi a thumbs-up from across the room, then tipped his black beard toward the table in the far corner by the window. John Smith was sitting alone, tapping away on a laptop. “Hey, Smith. Meet Minneapolis’s finest. Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth.”

  Smith stopped typing and stood up, and the three men took each other’s measure in an instant. Grace looked on in obvious bemusement. Men always measured themselves against each other, which wasn’t all that different from what women did, except that men did it so damn fast. There was an instant of locked eyes that apparently revealed everything they needed to know about each other. Women spent a lot longer with preliminary social chatter, while their real attention was focused on what Magozzi had told her was the superficial.

  Women look at clothes and makeup and weight and all sorts of silly shit . . .

  What women do that?

  Women who aren’t you, Grace. They’re looking for flaws. But men look for weaknesses first. Kind of an enemy assessment.

  Grace had smiled at him. They’re both kind of an enemy assessment, aren’t they?

  “Good morning, Detective Magozzi, Detective Rolseth. I’m Special Agent John Smith. I’m afraid we haven’t had much success tracing the posted film of your homicide . . .”

  “Grace told us.”

  “. . . and I understand from your Chief that MPD is also hitting a dead end on the local investigation.”

  Gino pulled out a chair and sat down. “Great. Now we’ve established that we’re all big fat failures.”

  “I certainly didn’t mean to imply—”

  “Yeah, yeah, sorry. I’m operating on really low voltage this morning. But you gotta remember, our investigation just got started late last night. Up until then, our homicide was ruled an accident, so don’t count out the MPD just yet.”

  “On the contrary. We’re counting on MPD. Toward that end, the Bureau would like to offer any assistance you might require. If you need help on the ground in evidence collection, canvassing, forensics, or suspect interviews, Special Agent in Charge Paul Shafer has committed to provide the manpower . . .”

  “Thanks, but we’ve got it covered,” Magozzi interrupted, still standing, taking the high ground. “We put twenty more officers on-site early this morning, blanketing the area between the club our vic left and where he ended up in the river. Any more would be overkill.”

  “Still, some extra eyes and hands might be helpful.”

  Magozzi finally sat across from Smith and leaned forward, eye to eye. “Straight up, Smith. I don’t feel like dancing this morning. Washington wants the case, right?”

  Smith looked right back at him. “That was the initial recommendation.”

  “You have absolutely no jurisdiction here.” Magozzi always spoke very slowly, very softly just before he started to bellow. Gino closed his eyes and waited. “Wishful thinking is about the only thing you’ve got connecting our case to your five. There is no way our Chief will voluntarily sign off on passing the ball to the Feds.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, but—”

  “This is MPD’s case, and we don’t need a parade of suits stomping all over our scene or interviewing potential witnesses or suspects. We’ve been down that road before, and when you start dividing tasks and information between agencies, a lot of it tends to get lost. Is it like that in D.C., or is Paul Shafer the only asshole in the organization?”

  Smith leaned back in his chair. “Lord, no, he’s not the only one.”

  Gino snickered.

  “And remember, I said that was the initial recommendation. I talked them out of it, at least for now. Just keep me in the loop, and I’ll do the same from my end. That’s all I ask.”

  Damn, Magozzi hated it when people did this to him. You get all prepped for battle and then the jerk you’re ready to stab through the heart lays down his sword. “Fair enough,” he grumbled.

  “I got something here,” Harley hollered from across the room, and everybody gathered around his computer. He pointed to some lines of text on a monitor bigger than Gino’s TV. “Check this out. It’s an encrypted post I hacked from one of your hot sites, Smith. It says, ‘City of Lakes. Bride in the water. Or would that be a groom? Near beer.’ Whatever that means.”

  “The film showed the old Grain Belt sign across the river,” Magozzi said.

  “Then that’s gotta be your case, guys.”

  Magozzi shrugged. “Sure. But this thing is all over the news, which means it’s all over the Web.”

  “I know. But you said your guy drowned two nights ago, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, this thing was posted the day before the murder.”

  The absence of sound in the room was profound, like a vacuum had sucked the air out of it. “Are you sure?” Magozzi finally asked.

  “Positive. This sick bastard was pre-advertising and then he posted his trophy video to prove he did it.”

  CHAPTER 12

  MAGOZZI LOOKED AT THE SIGN ON THE DOOR THAT READ DR. CHELSEA THOMAS and his mouth turned down. Who named their kid Chelsea? And if you got saddled with a moniker like that, you ought to grow up to be an exotic dancer instead of an FBI profiler. This was going to suck, big-time.

  Ten minutes later he was in a private office that looked like every other FBI office he’d been in. Desk, chair, bookcase, venetian blinds. Robot land.

  And, oh, Lord, was she ever a Fed, through and through. Came in from a side room in a shapeless blue suit and one of those pasted smiles that flashed on and off so fast you could never be sure you’d seen it at all. She had real blond hair pulled back in a bun, apologizing for its brightness, the fair skin and blue eyes that went with it.

  “Detective Magozzi.” She held out her hand for a cursory shake, then sat behind her desk and opened a thin file folder centered on the blotter. “Thank you very much for agreeing to see me.”

  “Agent Smith asked nicely.”

  “I’m sure he did.”

  “But he wasn’t real specific about the reason.”

  She nodded. “I’ve been working these murders since the Cleveland film, never expecting to have one land on my home turf. Talking directly to the detective in charge of the case might help with my profiling.”

  Magozzi pointed at the file on her desk. “You got our case summary, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Everything’s in there.”

  “There might be something else, something you didn’t think was significant that could come out in conversation.”

  Magozzi tried not to roll his eyes. Man, she sounded like every shrink he’d ever talked to.

  “Sit down, Detective, please. Would you like coffee? Tea?”

  “It’s five o’clock. You have a beer?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Not as sorry as I am.”

  She was already busily writing on her little pad.

  “
You’re taking a lot of notes for a meeting that’s lasted less than a minute. You mind telling me what’s so interesting?”

  She put down her pen—fountain, not ballpoint—and looked up at him. “I was just prefacing our talk with the observation that you do not trust the Bureau in general, or my specialty of profiling in particular. Correct?”

  Magozzi exhaled noisily and fought off the Minnesota impulse to be polite at all costs. “I put profiling on about the same level as consulting psychics.”

  “It’s a little more scientific than that.”

  “Oh, yeah? Well, the way I see it, you people go through the records cops made, see that a real high percentage of serial killers are male, white, between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-seven, blah, blah, blah, then predict that any serial killer is male, white, and between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-seven, and then when those same cops nab the guy, you say, ‘See, what did we tell you?’ There was a fake gypsy at my high school carnival that did a hell of a lot better than that.”

  Dr. Chelsea Thomas put her elbow on the desk and her chin in her hand, and Magozzi tried to analyze the body language. God knew she was analyzing his, and the least he could do was return the favor. Man, he hated shrinks. He folded his arms across his chest and tipped back his head, looking down his nose at her. See that? Defensive arm posture; disdainful head position. Take cover.

  Obviously he wasn’t having a whole lot of luck intimidating her, because she smiled at him. A really great smile. “It is five o’clock. Past five, in fact, and there’s a terrific Irish pub a few blocks over with some great stuff on tap. If you’re up for it, it might be an environment a little more conducive to establishing a productive working relationship. What do you say?”

  Magozzi frowned at her, sensing a trap. “Are you asking me out on a date?”

  She laughed quietly. It was a nice laugh, but humiliating, all the same. “Absolutely not. But this isn’t analysis, Detective, and it certainly isn’t mandatory. I was hoping that we might be able to help each other on this case, but clearly you’re uncomfortable here.” She hesitated for a moment. “And obviously you’ve had a very bad day.”

  That was one of the great come-ons with the mental health crowd. From priests to psychiatrists, the standard opening was something that was supposed to sound sympathetic, but was really a trick to get you to spill your guts. Magozzi ought to know. He’d used the same tactic in interrogation rooms often enough. “Killers are getting their rocks off posting films of real murders on the Internet, and at least one of them advertised who they were going to kill ahead of time. If you’re even close to human and you’ve read that file you’ve had a pretty goddamned bad day, too.”

  She looked down at the file in the center of her very tidy desk, then pushed her fingers back through her hair, making it stand up and look weird. This was body language Magozzi understood, because it was brutally honest. Women did not muss coiffed hair or rub mascaraed eyes voluntarily; this was impulsive, careless, and real. “I’ve read the file. And, yes, I’ve had a pretty bad day. And I could use a beer. Maybe two, because it looks like all the beasts are coming out to play.”

  It was indeed a terrific pub, with a wild Irish band and the smell of hops and sweat and probably twenty criminals who looked a lot like Harley Davidson doing jigs in their motorcycle boots. Whatever the on-tap stuff was, it hit Magozzi’s system like great-grandmother’s practice quilt, fluttering down over your body and head, blocking the light, making a hidey hole.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this,” Dr. Chelsea Thomas was saying, words running together just a little, because she was on her second beer, as promised, and she wasn’t used to it. “People use the Web to post documentation of their bad behavior all the time.”

  “Like those high school girls beating up their classmate.”

  “Exactly. But aside from the very rare snuff film that appears on an underground site, we’ve never seen film of a real murder posted, certainly not on sites like YouTube, and that’s what frightens me. Whoever is posting these films is bragging.”

  Magozzi stared at her. “Bragging to whom?”

  “The whole world. The point is, the FBI has confirmed five actual homicides with posted videos—six, counting your river killing—all of which have happened within the last four months. This is truly chilling.”

  Well, yes, it was, but in spite of that fact, Magozzi had part of a beer inside and a warm environment outside and a pretty woman across from him, and he was starting to get a little too comfortable. He waved over a waitress and ordered hamburgers and onion rings. This was bar food—bad food—and he was salivating like Pavlov’s dog waiting for it. He tried to remember the last time he’d stopped at a bar on the way home for a couple of brews and some saturated fat, and couldn’t. “You and my partner think alike.”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  “Bad. You’ve just given validity to his theory that it’s a traveling serial killer taking advantage of a worldwide audience.”

  Dr. Chelsea Thomas shrugged out of her blue suit jacket and showed a white blouse with little frilly ruffles around the collar that interested Magozzi not at all, because Grace wasn’t wearing it. “Let’s hope so.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Look at it this way. Take your average serial or thrill killer. All that bullshit—” she stopped abruptly and blinked. “Oh, dear. Sorry about the language.” She pushed her beer away. “Anyway, all that dogma about killers waiting to get caught, wanting to get caught, makes people think they’re remorseful and need to expunge their guilt. Pure nonsense. They’re looking for the celebrity. Heck, some of them repeat like they were going for the Guinness Book of Records title for most hits, or most horrible hits, whatever. Trouble with a career like that is you can’t show off how good you are.”

  “So this killer is looking for attention.”

  “Not attention. Fame. There’s a big difference. Attention invites scrutiny, and, like I said, these sickos don’t want to be caught. From the conception to the crime, to the fear they create in the public and the frustration they cause the cops, this whole process is all about power. But we’re a visual society now. Headlines don’t cut it because nobody reads anymore, and cops never show the butchered victims on the nightly news. Enter the Internet. ‘See what I did? See what I can do to you?’ ”

  Magozzi actually felt his face crinkling up, which, for some inexplicable reason, made her smile again.

  “So. If serial killers can show their work on the Net, the power surge intensifies. The film is the new trophy. They don’t have to cut off body parts or snatch bloody panties to hide in their walls. They don’t have to escalate to garner attention, which is how we’ve always caught them. They deliver visual evidence to the whole world of what they do like some Hollywood mogol premiering a new movie, and we are never going to catch these people again.”

  Magozzi blinked at her. “That’s really negative.”

  She leaned back as the waitress slid a plate piled with poison food in front of her. “Well, that’s a shame, because that was the good news. Just what serial killers might do with the Web. Too bad I don’t think that’s what’s happening here, because it’s much worse.” She picked up an onion ring, took a bite, and closed her eyes. “Oh, God, that’s good. I haven’t had one of these in years.”

  “Wait just a minute. Put down that onion ring.”

  Once she started giggling, she couldn’t seem to stop. “Oh, Lord, cops really talk like that, don’t they? I feel like I’m in a movie. And I also think I may have had a bit too much to drink.”

  “You’ve had a beer and a half.”

  “I know. But I’ve never actually had a whole entire beer before. Ever.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “No, I’m Mormon. At least I used to be.” That made her laugh, too, and she covered her mouth with her hand like a kid with braces. “Do you think you could order me a glass of milk?”

  Magozzi was trying not to smil
e, because it didn’t seem appropriate, seeing that she’d just told him serial killers weren’t the worst thing in life. “Do not drink any more of that beer. Do not get drunk. When I get back, I want to know what’s worse than serial killers using the Internet.”

  She gave him a silly little smile and picked up her hamburger.

  Big surprise. Irish pubs did not serve milk. He had to go to the convenience store at the end of the block and then race back before Miss Psychiatrist FBI agent/profiler passed out in the booth. He slammed down a gallon of skim.

  “That’s really big.” Her plate was almost empty, and she looked almost normal.

  “I wanted one of those little cartons you used to get in grade school. Profiteering money-hungry bastards don’t carry them. Don’t even carry quarts, or half gallons. You want milk, you lay down your pension.”

  “Sorry. I’ll buy your dinner. Which is now cold and greasy.”

  “Thank you for the review.”

  She pushed away her plate with one finger and smiled. “We’re talking about terrible things, and this is very unprofessional, but I want you to know I’m actually having a nice time tonight, which was totally unexpected, and really appreciated.”

  Magozzi smiled and took a bite of his burger. It was cold and greasy and fabulous. “What’s in this?” he asked the exasperated waitress as she dodged drunken dancers and passed their table.

  “A dead animal. What do you think?”

  Chelsea Thomas, should-have-been exotic dancer, watched him dig in. “Do you have any women friends, Detective?”

  He shook his head while he chewed. “Never have. I have women I love, and women I lust after.”

  “Do you lust after the woman you love?”

  “I do.”

  She picked up her last onion ring and held it up to the light like a jewel. “That’s just about as perfect as it gets, isn’t it? Tell me about her.”

  Magozzi put his burger down on the plate and stared at it. This was just about the strangest evening he’d ever spent in his life, which was saying something when you were a homicide cop. Maybe it was the beer or the mood or the fact that they were sitting at a table in a bar with a gallon of milk between them, but whatever it was, he opened his mouth and Grace MacBride fell out. He told her everything; things he’d never thought aloud to himself, let alone voiced to anyone else. She listened to every word, drinking it in like it was some kind of magic elixir, and when he was finished, and embarrassed, she did a man thing. She ignored all the intimate feelings he had shared as if they had never happened, and changed the subject.