Shoot to Thrill

by P. J. Tracy

  “This is what I’m really afraid is happening, Detective.”

  THE ROOM WAS DARK except for the halogen puddles that spilled down onto the worktable, illuminating two pairs of gloved hands that cast eerie, mesmerizing shadows on the wall as they carefully poured viscous liquid into the containers and lined them up in the center of the table—none of them touching, all of them far from the edge. Such a simple task, but the first part had taken over an hour.

  All the practice runs had been helpful, but essentially worthless. This time it was the real thing, and nerves crept into the equation, making hands shake and hearts beat faster.

  When the last container was sealed, they both stepped back from the table a few steps and just breathed, letting the nerves settle before part two.

  They’d prepared the outer packagings first, and those were all waiting on the floor with their tops open like hungry baby birds. The interior shields were secure, meticulously placed and anchored.

  Lowering the inner containers was slow, methodical, and nerve-wracking. A drop of sweat loaded with DNA fell and spread on one of the packages. It would leave a telltale watermark, and that package was immediately discarded and replaced with a spare. They’d thought of everything, and it had all been so pathetically simple, as most acts of genius were. Everything you needed to know was all right there on the Internet.

  They had often wondered why no one had done it before, but it was certain that a lot of others would do it soon, because it wouldn’t be long before the whole world was watching.

  CHAPTER 13

  JUDGE JAMES BUKOWSKI HAD CELEBRATED HIS RELEASE from the Hennepin County Hilton by re-toxing with an excellent bottle of sour mash that had quelled his shakes and improved his spirits considerably; at least up until the point he’d lost sentience, sometime around noon.

  Hours later, when he finally came to in the chilly embrace of his Corbusier chaise, his furry mind surprised him with a singular, revelatory thought that seemed deeply profound to him, primarily because it didn’t involve the logistical planning of getting to the bathroom for aspirin and Ativan: he really hated this goddamned fucking uncomfortable overpriced chair. He really hated it.

  Wife Number Four had managed to convince him, after several years of passive-aggressive torture and craven guilt-tripping, that original Mid-Century Modern was not only chic, not only a shrewd investment opportunity, but also “outrageously comfortable”—no doubt a paraphrase from some article she’d read.

  Well, the über-cow had been wrong, so wrong, no doubt brainwashed by Architectural Digest, her flaming-faggot designer, and her pathetic, social-climbing friends, just as she’d brainwashed him. The difference was, the Hall of Famer from the pantheon of idiots had figured that out before he had, obviously—because the chair was about the only thing of value he’d gotten out of that divorce. And if he’d been sober a single day during the five-year marriage, he would have realized this, and probably a lot of other things he’d missed in the black hole of dead brain cells.

  Where the hell had that come from? he wondered to himself, and then, for the first time in a long while, the judge smiled a genuine smile. Little nuggets of self-reflection had always raised their ugly, unmanageable heads throughout his life, and they terrified him. Bourbon helped with the whack-a-mole game he played with his deeper thoughts when they inconvenienced him, but tonight, for some reason, things seemed just a little bit different. And as much as he wanted to believe he’d come to this pivotal moment on his own, he had to give Detective Magozzi credit for facing him squarely last night and calling him out. What happened to the respected judge?

  What happened, indeed? He’d never believed in second chances, not in life and not on the bench, but he was going to make an exception right here and now. It was time for him to stop being such a self-pitying, self-indulgent fuck and get back to the business of doling out justice. He made a mental note to send Magozzi a fruit basket or something.

  Feeling more sober than he had in several decades, and with a renewed sense of purpose, he fished his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed Ex-Wife Number Four. She wasn’t on speed-dial, but the number lived on vividly, if unpleasantly, in his memory. Of course she didn’t answer—she never did—but that didn’t really matter.

  “Jennifer, this is Jim. No need to call back, I just wanted to let you know that the Corbusier and I have finally decided to amicably part, due to irreconcilable differences. And instead of consigning it with Christie’s, as was my initial thought, I’ve decided that I want you to have it. I know you love it so much, and who wouldn’t, being that it is so outrageously comfortable. I will arrange for a delivery within the next few days, I hope that suits you. That’s all.”

  He hung up, pulled himself off the chair that had catalyzed his new beginning, and instead of going to the liquor cabinet or the pharmacy that was his bathroom medicine cabinet, he went straight to the gun safe and selected a rifle. “Here comes the judge.”

  CHAPTER 14

  THE RISING SUN WAS JUST BEGINNING TO PAINT THE SKY and waken the city, but the Monkeewrench office lights were still burning, as they had been all night. Annie and Grace had finally crashed in guest rooms at five a.m., but Harley and Roadrunner kept working, fueled by a steady intake of hypercaffeinated beverages and chocolate.

  Harley pushed back from his computer and rubbed his burning eyes. “Roadrunner, dump the programming work and give me a hand here.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Well, I was thinking that if our bride drowning was pre-advertised, maybe there were pre-posts for the other five murders.”

  “Not a bad idea, but I can’t do it, Harley. We’re way behind on programming.”

  Harley rolled his chair over to Roadrunner’s station and spun his friend around to face him. “Listen, we can get the new program up and running within a week, and what’s the prize for that? Verifying that what looks like dead people are really dead people, instead of some asshole teenager’s idea of a video prank. But if we find other posts forecasting the murders we know about, then maybe we find a pattern, maybe we find some new posts in time to save some lives.”

  Roadrunner tugged at the denim creases bunching around the backs of his knees. “Well. No contest, then, is there?”

  Harley shook his big head. “Not to my way of thinking.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at where Agent Smith was sleeping on a couch. “Don’t know how he’s going to feel about it, though.”

  Smith rolled his supposedly sleeping head and opened his eyes. “Go for the posts,” he said, then turned over.

  “It might delay the new software.”

  “Go for the posts,” Smith repeated.

  An hour later Roadrunner entered the last command with a single push of the enter button, and text started scrolling up his screen. “Holy mackerel, Harley. They just popped up. Every one of them.”

  Harley’s motorcycle boots pounding across the wooden floor startled Smith awake. “What’s going on?”

  Harley was staring at Roadrunner’s monitor, rocking on his heels, slab arms folded across his chest, grinning. “Holy shit. Holy rosy shit. I’ll tell you what’s going on. My little buddy here found forecast postings for the city murders. Every goddamned one of them. Even our river bride is on the list.” He gave Smith a hearty slap on the shoulder when he came over to read. “How about that?”

  “How the hell did you find them?”

  “Oh, man, this was so cool. I kept trying these broad search programs on words and syllables and anything else I could dream up an algorithm for, and all the time I was so pissed at this idiot because he couldn’t even type. Kept hitting the shift key in the wrong places, capping letters that shouldn’t be capitalized, missing ones that should. And then I noticed that ‘city of lakes’ was the only part of the header with typos. Every other word was perfect, and that seemed weird. Take a look.” He enlarged the Minneapolis post on the screen.

  CiTy oF laKes. Bride in the water. Or would that be a g
room? Near beer.

  “See? The first, third, sixth, and ninth characters are capped. So I did a search on that specific pattern of caps and lowercase and this one popped: ‘CiTy oF anGels. No home. Near pier.’ ”

  “That’s the L.A. murder,” Smith said. “The victim was a homeless man found under the Santa Monica Pier on June 4th.”

  Roadrunner looked up at him. “This was posted June 2nd.”

  Smith pulled up a chair. “Let me look at the rest of them.”

  “It’s all right there.” Roadrunner rolled aside to make room for him while Harley hovered behind his shoulder.

  “City of Rock?” Smith read.

  “Gotta be Cleveland,” Harley said. “The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is there. And look at that—City of Longhorns. That’s Austin.”

  Smith nodded. “And here’s Chicago—City of Broad Shoulders. And City of Starbucks is obviously Seattle. My God. That’s all of our five, plus the Minneapolis river murder.”

  “Jesus,” Harley muttered. “What kind of a sick game is this guy playing?”

  “It gets worse. Take a look at this.” Roadrunner punched the page-down key, and Smith’s face went a little gray. “Page two. This is an old post, from January. ‘City of Big Water. Hole in one. North Shore.’ Same typo pattern, same general format, but I don’t know if it’s a pre-post for a real murder. Any chance your guys in Cyber Crimes missed one?”

  Smith closed his eyes briefly. “That’s been a concern since we received the first video. Remember, the only reason we found five was because the sites sent us the murder clips when they were posted.”

  Harley grumbled. “If that’s a real one, the vic’s toast by now. What about the last one?”

  “ ‘City of Roses. Bert’s barmaid. Near deer.’ ”

  “When was it posted?”

  “Let me check.” Roadrunner fiddled on his keyboard for a few seconds and pulled up a new screen. “Okay, here it is. Posted on . . . oh, Jesus.”

  “What is it?” Harley leaned closer to the monitor.

  “It was posted last night. This one may not have happened yet.”

  CHAPTER 15

  MAGOZZI WAS SITTING AT HIS DESK WITH THE MORNING’S fourth mug of coffee, staring out the window at the steady rain and the swarm of colorful umbrellas with legs that were fleeing the streets and disappearing into the downtown office buildings. The downpour had started early, just after dawn, riding in on a massive bank of black clouds that had settled into an indefinite stall over the Twin Cities. At the moment, it was making glacial progress eastward, drenching the center of the state with triple the expected rainfall. Assuming that a storm system of such biblical proportions would be easy to spot on Doppler, it seemed odd to him that the meteorologists hadn’t given any advance warning on the news last night. Hell, maybe this was an act of God. Or a portent of doom. Or both.

  He hadn’t slept much after he’d safely delivered a tipsy Chelsea Thomas to her uptown Minneapolis house last night. Probably a combination of too much beer, too much grease, and too much conversation about things that were going on in the world that could drive anyone with a soul to consider suicide. Or perhaps it was the unexpected hug, warm and genuine, that she’d given him in the car before dashing up her front walk and letting herself in with a final, grandiose wave goodbye . . .

  “Leo? Hello?”

  Gino was suddenly standing next to him, looking wet and bedraggled.

  “Oh . . . morning, Gino.”

  “Are you even awake?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Good. Me either. What’s with this rain bullshit, anyhow?” He shucked off his blazer, exposing a pristine white shirt and intact tie, but the front of his pants were visibly wet, the cuffs still dripping water over his sodden loafers and onto the floor.

  “What the hell happened to you?”

  “Oh, I was so hoping you’d ask. Angela needed the car today because the Volvo’s in the shop—again—so she dropped me off at the corner. And guess what? The storm drains are backed up, there’s a foot of standing water in the streets, and I’m the lucky guy who was on the curb when some cowboy in an SUV decided to run a yellow light at thirty-five miles an hour. My toes feel like stewed prunes and I’m not even going to take a stab at describing what cold, wet undershorts are doing to other parts of my anatomy right now.”

  “I appreciate that more than you know.”

  Gino sank into his chair and ran a hand through the blond hedge of his buzzcut like a squeegee. A mist of water rained down onto his desk blotter. “So where is everybody?”

  “McLaren and Tinker caught a call at a rental on Blaisdell; land-lord and tenant got into it and one of them ended up at the bottom of the basement stairs with his head in pieces . . .”

  “Man, you’re just daisies in the morning, Leo, you know that?”

  “. . . almost everybody else is working the ‘suspicious death’ in Little Mogadishu.”

  “Ah. I heard about that one on the news on the way in. Seven bullet holes in the kid, and right away someone labels it suspicious.”

  “That’s the one. And Gloria’s at the dentist.”

  Gloria handled the phones, the files, and ran roughshod over all the detectives in Homicide. She was almost ebony-black, lived on fast food and flamboyant clothing, and tortured Detective Johnny McLaren’s Jack Sprat frame with every single swing of her generous hips. She was also one of the few people in the world who could out-sass Gino, and leave him happy about it, which was a rare and wondrous gift.

  “Damn. Gloria was the only bright spot I expected in this day. What was she wearing?”

  “That tiger-striped thing she always wears to the dentist. Root canal this time, and she’s going to be mean as a wet cat when she gets back.”

  Gino grunted. “Not that anybody’ll be able to tell the difference. And what happened to you last night? Tried calling you at ten, you weren’t home, and not to put too fine a point on it, but you look like crap. Almost hungover.”

  “Bad sleep and not much of it.”

  “I get that. I had nonstop nightmares about nuking everything with a circuit board in my house.” His eyes drifted to the huge, cellophane-wrapped wicker basket that monopolized the entirety of Magozzi’s desktop. “Is that a fruit basket?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s up with that?”

  “It’s from Judge Jim.”

  Gino frowned. “You busted the guy’s balls the other night and he sends you a fruit basket? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t get many visitors.”

  “Well, shit. Give me a banana. So how was your meeting with the profiler last night?”

  “Interesting. Depressing. Scary.” Magozzi ripped open the fruit basket, tossed a banana to Gino, and grabbed an apple for himself.

  “Yeah? Did he tell you anything you didn’t already know?”

  “Kind of. And it’s a she, by the way.”

  Gino waited patiently for further edification while he peeled his banana, and when it didn’t come, he leaned forward on his elbows. “You’re a million miles away, Leo. So who exactly is this ‘she,’ and are you going to tell me what she said that has you so doped up, or is it rated X?”

  “It’s rated G. But she had some insights.”

  “Like?”

  “Like the Web is normalizing deviant behavior.”

  “Is there anybody in the world with a Ph.D. who actually speaks English?”

  “She does, and everything she said made a scary kind of sense.”

  “Oh, man. She’s either one good shrink, or she’s a part-time supermodel, if she’s got you jumping on the psychobabble wagon train.”

  Magozzi gave him a warning glance. “Do you want to hear this or not?”

  “Sorry. Go for it.”

  “There have always been the natural born killers, and there always will be, and of course they’re going to use the Web, just like everybody else in the world.”

  “Well, yeah, we ki
nd of figured that out already.”

  “But, there are also a lot of people on the cusp—disgruntled, twisted, deviant, whatever—who might normally never act on their urges in the real world because there’s no catalyst to push them to the next level. And some of these types actually understand that what they’re feeling is antisocial and wrong. Enter the Web—a safe, fantasy forum to communicate with like-minded people. ‘Hey, Joe, you fantasize about raping and killing women? Me too!’ Get a blog with fifty or a hundred or a thousand guys like Joe talking to one another, and you’ve got yourself a whole new culture with its own morals and code of conduct.”

  Gino grimaced like he’d just swallowed a bug. “Christ.”

  “It’s a support structure. And her assumption is, it can escalate into reality from there. How many of the school shootings in the last few years would have happened if Columbine hadn’t happened first?”

  “So what we might have is a bunch of amoral whack jobs telling the other amoral whack jobs out there that it’s A-okay to murder, and then they all start believing it for real?”

  “Yeah. Like that.”

  “Sounds like Lord of the Flies and a twelve-step program for homicide all rolled into one.”

  “That’s what she’s afraid is happening. That the Web is actually enabling these monsters and the community is getting stronger.”

  Gino put down his half-eaten banana and stared at it. Long ago he’d come to the point in his life where he believed he’d seen and heard it all, the worst of the worst that humanity had to offer. But if this were really happening, he’d been pretty goddamned wrong about that. “How can she sleep at night with all that crap running through her head? I mean, I’ve come up with some pretty crazy scenarios over the years, but even I couldn’t dream that shit up. How the hell are we supposed to keep up with something like this?”