Want to Play?

by P. J. Tracy

  Magozzi nodded. ‘The Feds had them flagged, and so far they refuse to tell us why. Now whether you were a suspect or a victim in their case, I have no clue, but the whole thing is starting to smell. You just moved sky-high on the suspect list, and the longer you hold back information that might help, the higher you go.’

  Mitch shot up from his chair with a suddenness that surprised even his friends. Gino was three steps toward him from the door so fast no one had seen him move, his reaction time honed by years with volatile perps whose sudden movements never meant anything good. ‘We can’t tell you anything!’ he shouted, and Magozzi took note of his word choice. Can’t, not won’t.

  Gino stopped where he was, still watchful. ‘Why not?’

  Mitch had delicate nostrils for a man, and they flared visibly when he breathed too hard. ‘Because Grace’s life might depend on it, that’s why!’ He blinked in sudden confusion, perhaps startled by the sound of his own raised voice.

  ‘Sit down, Mitch,’ Grace MacBride said quietly. ‘Please.’

  They all turned to look at her, surprised she had spoken at all. Mitch hesitated, then eased back down into his chair. He looked like a whipped dog.

  ‘Grace, don’t,’ Annie said gently. ‘It isn’t necessary. This is a totally different thing. What happened then has nothing to do with what’s happening now.’

  ‘And maybe you’re just hoping it doesn’t,’ Magozzi suggested quietly.

  ‘No, damnit.’ Harley Davidson was looking straight at him, shaking his head so hard his ponytail swung from side to side. ‘It’s not worth the chance.’

  ‘I agree,’ Roadrunner mumbled at the floor, and Magozzi guessed that was about as defiant as this obviously timid man ever got.

  Grace MacBride took a deep breath, then opened her mouth to speak.

  ‘Grace!’ Annie hissed before she had a chance. ‘They’re cops, for Christ’s sake! You’re going to trust cops?’

  ‘So much for the Friendly Policeman myth,’ Gino said sarcastically, and Annie turned on him.

  ‘Cops – cops just like you – nearly got her killed!’

  Magozzi and Gino exchanged a quick glance, but said nothing. There was a little crack in the wall now, and they both knew all they could do was wait.

  ‘They’ve got my prints,’ Grace MacBride said. ‘It’s just a matter of time now anyway.’ She was sitting straight in her chair, her hands resting quietly in her lap, one elbow held slightly to the side to accommodate the empty shoulder holster. ‘Ten years ago we were all seniors at Georgia State in Atlanta.’

  ‘Goddamnit.’ Harley closed his eyes and shook his head sadly. The rest of the Monkeewrench crew seemed to sag in their chairs as something slipped away from them they couldn’t get back.

  ‘Five people were murdered on campus that fall,’ Grace continued, her voice a brutal monotone, her eyes fixed on Magozzi’s face.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Gino murmured involuntarily. ‘I remember that. You were there?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  Magozzi nodded carefully, reminding himself to breathe. He hadn’t known for certain what had sent these people underground, but this kind of nightmare was the last thing he had expected. He remembered the murders, and the firestorm of publicity. ‘This is the case that’s in the sealed FBI file?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘That doesn’t make sense. Why would they seal that file? It was all over the news for weeks . . .’

  ‘Not all of it,’ Annie said dryly. ‘There were certain things that never became public information. The Atlanta police didn’t even have all of it, and the FBI wants to keep it that way.’

  Magozzi let that one ride. Sure, it was possible the FBI would seal a file to cover some perceived wrongdoing, but it was also possible they’d do it to protect evidence or witnesses. ‘Okay.’ He glanced at Grace. She was pale, obviously tense, looking straight ahead. ‘I take it you were suspects, or at least acquainted with the victims.’

  Grace spoke with all the emotion of someone reading a grocery list. ‘Kathy Martin, Daniella Farcell, my roommates. Professor Marian Amburson, my counselor and art instructor. Johnny Bricker. I dated Johnny for a while, we stayed close even after we broke it off.’ She kept looking at him, but she didn’t say anymore.

  ‘That’s four,’ Magozzi nudged her gently, and she moved her head in the tiniest nod.

  ‘After the fourth murder, because I was so close to all the victims, the Atlanta police and the FBI decided I was what they called an oblique target. That whoever was doing it was trying to punish me by eliminating the people I cared about, the people I depended on. So they gave me a new friend and set a trap. Libbie Herold, FBI, second year out of the academy. She was very good. Very professional. On her fourth day as my new roommate, he killed her, too.’

  Magozzi held her gaze because she seemed to be demanding that. Everyone else was looking down at their laps or the floor or their hands, places you look when you want to distance yourself from what’s going on around you. After what seemed like a decent interval, if such a thing were possible at all, he asked her, ‘What about this group? Were you all friends at that point?’

  She nodded, lips curved slightly in a knowing smile that held no humor. ‘More than friends. We were family. And we still are. And yes, the FBI looked at all of us . . .’

  ‘With a magnifying glass,’ Harley put in. His face was flushed and his tone was sharp, bitter. ‘And don’t think we don’t know what you’re thinking. The cops and the Feds took us down the same road. Either Grace was killing her own friends, or more likely, since none of us ever bought it, one of us was doing it. Broke their hearts when they couldn’t pin it on us, or at least it would have if any of those scumbags had had hearts.’

  For the first time Magozzi saw the part of Harley Davidson he wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley. He wasn’t just bitter; he was seething with a rage that hadn’t tempered a bit in all these years. He’d seen the same thing in Grace MacBride; a touch of it in all of them, and it made him nervous. They didn’t just mistrust authority; they hated it. He wondered if any or all of them were mad enough to kill. Harley certainly looked like he was. His head was lowered, his hands clenched into fists on his thighs.

  The big man took a couple of deep breaths, blowing them out slowly, reining it in. ‘Anyway, the FBI wanted to try another plant, but Grace decided she didn’t want to play their reindeer games anymore, didn’t want to wait around to see if the killer would get to the rest of us. So we disappeared.’ He jerked his head toward Roadrunner. ‘This guy’s the genius who did it. Wiped us all right out. Far as we know, the Feebs were still groping around blind till you sent in Grace’s prints, and for that, Detective, it is my sincerest wish that your balls rot slowly and painfully and then fall off.’

  Magozzi smiled a little. ‘The prints piqued the FBI’s interest, all right, and now I see why. They never made an arrest, did they? And Ms MacBride was their only connection –’

  ‘They were using her as bait.’ Mitch Cross was furious, too, but his anger was colder than Davidson’s, and somehow more disturbing.

  ‘And now, thanks to you,’ Harley said, ‘they know where we are, they know Grace’s new identity, and all the killer has to do is access their records –’

  ‘We never put a name on the prints,’ Magozzi interrupted, leaving Harley with his mouth open on his last word. ‘The only people who know they belong to Ms MacBride are in this room, and we’ve got no problem with it staying that way.’

  Harley closed his mouth, but they all still eyed Magozzi with suspicion.

  ‘Okay, just a minute.’ Gino walked over to the front desk and sat behind it, frowning down at the scarred wooden surface. ‘Are you telling me you all just walked away from everything? Three-plus years of college, friends, families . . .’

  ‘We don’t have families.’ Roadrunner frowned at him as if he were supposed to know that. ‘That’s how we all hooked up in the first place. Everybody on campus went home for holi
days, and there we were, darn near the only people eating in the cafeteria. One day we all moved to the same table. Called ourselves the Orphan Club.’ He smiled at the memory, which to Magozzi’s amazement was apparently a pleasant one.

  Mitch Cross was looking superior again, now that the secrets were all out and there was nothing left to bluster about. ‘So now you know everything. Are you satisfied, Magozzi?’ He used his last name like a weapon, leaving off the title.

  ‘Not quite. If Ms MacBride was never the direct target in Atlanta, if the rest of you, as the people closest to her, were probably a lot higher on that killer’s hit list – why is she the one who carries a gun and lives in a vault?’

  The five exchanged sheepish glances.

  ‘Uh, actually.’ Roadrunner scratched his left earlobe. ‘We all have pretty decent security systems, and . . .’

  ‘We all carry.’ Mitch shrugged. ‘As I’m sure your desk sergeant will tell you if he ever gets his mouth closed again.’

  Harley chuckled. ‘He was pretty surprised when we all checked weapons on the way in.’

  ‘You all carry guns?’

  ‘All the time,’ Harley said matter-of-factly, ‘just like Grace. Hers is just a little bigger, that’s all, a little more obvious.’

  ‘Jesus Christ.’ Gino shuddered a little, thinking back to when they’d first walked into the Monkeewrench office, never imagining that they’d been entering an armed camp. ‘You’ve all got permits?’

  Mitch snorted softly. ‘You think we’re idiots? You think we’d tell you we carried if we didn’t have permits?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what I think,’ Magozzi said quietly, looking at each one of them. ‘Apparently all of you live under tight security and carry guns because every single one of you has been looking over your shoulder for the past ten years, thinking this killer was going to track you down. And now that it looks like that might have happened, every one of you is saying, oh no, it’s totally unrelated, it can’t possibly be the same guy. You said cops have tunnel vision? Well, I’m here to tell you we don’t hold a candle to you people in that department.’

  Roadrunner was frowning hard, biting his lower lip. ‘But it could be some psycho just playing the game. It’s not impossible. You know how many serial killers are operating in this country at any given moment?’

  ‘As it happens, I do. Upwards of two hundred. And yes, it’s possible. Anything’s possible. But it would be a hell of a coincidence, so we’re going to be looking at this, and we’re going to need to know a lot more about what happened in Atlanta.’

  Annie Belinsky’s eyes shot up to his in a panic. A movement in her lap caught his eye, and he glanced down and saw her wagging a finger back and forth almost imperceptibly, warning him to back off. That wouldn’t have stopped him, but the naked plea in her eyes did.

  He hesitated, his eyes still locked on Belinsky’s. ‘We’ll get in touch with you later.’

  Her long lashes fluttered closed briefly, then she got up from her chair. ‘So we’re finished here.’

  ‘For now,’ Magozzi replied. ‘I want numbers, cells, if you’ve got them, for all of you before you leave. Write ’em down, give ’em to Gloria. And I want to know where you’re going to be, today, tonight, tomorrow.’

  He and Gino watched silently as the five filed out of the room, then Gino got up and closed the door and turned to face his partner. ‘You’ve got about five seconds to explain to me why you let those people out of here, and then another five to call downstairs and have them stopped before they leave the building.’

  ‘That’s what you think we should do?’

  ‘Damn straight that’s what I think we should do. And I’ll tell you why. Because A, I don’t care if the Feds couldn’t pin anything on them in Georgia, one of them was the killer then, and he’s the killer now, because that’s the only thing that makes sense. And B, said killer is going to pick up his gun and go dust somebody at the mall unless we lock him up.’

  ‘We can’t hold them, and they’re all smart enough to know that.’

  ‘We could lose them in transport for about a day and a half, at least until we can turn the screws on the FBI and get some straight answers. And then I want to talk to the locals who gave carry permits to a bunch of nutcases like that. Shit, they barely let us carry.’

  ‘We’re going to get a little more information first.’

  ‘Oh yeah? From where?’

  ‘From Annie Belinsky. She’ll be back in a minute.’

  Gino opened his mouth just as the door opened behind him. He turned and stared as Annie Belinsky breezed in on a cloud of orange.

  ‘You tryin’ to catch flies with that thing, sugar?’ She put a long orange nail under Gino’s chin and closed his mouth, then sauntered over to Magozzi and looked straight at him. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘You’re welcome. But it was a conditional reprieve.’

  ‘I know the rules.’

  ‘Uh, excuse me for living.’ Gino was scowling. ‘How the hell did you know she was coming back? And what the hell are you talking about? You two got some psychic thing going here or what?’

  Annie snagged her purse from where she’d tucked it under her chair and held it aloft with one finger. ‘This is how he knew I was coming back, and as for some psychic connection, well’ – she smiled at Magozzi and her drawl deepened – ‘your friend here’s got some dynamite eyes, haven’t you ever noticed that?’

  ‘Oh, sure,’ Gino said. ‘Every day I sit across from him and wish I had peepers that special.’

  ‘Well, you should. He talks with them just as clear as snowmelt runnin’ into a creek, and that’s how we made our agreement. He lived up to his part, now I’m here to give him my tit for his tat.’

  Gino blinked several times, rapidly, then decided not to touch that one.

  Annie sighed sharply, all business now, and the drawl faded a bit as the tempo of her speech increased. ‘I’ve got about five minutes before one of them figures I’ve been spirited away to the drunk tank or something and comes runnin’ to save me, so tell me what you want to know about Atlanta.’

  ‘I want to know what you didn’t want me to ask Ms MacBride.’

  ‘Well.’ She took a breath, let it out slowly. ‘That would be just about everything. For starters, the Atlanta murders were totally different than what’s going down here, which is one of the reasons we aren’t thinking it’s the same killer. I don’t have to tell you how rare it is for a serial killer to change the way he kills; in particular, the weapon he uses.’

  ‘It could happen.’

  ‘Yes, of course it could,’ she said impatiently, ‘but rarely, like I said. Especially when there’s some sort of ritual involved, which seemed to be the case in Atlanta. That animal used an X-Acto knife.’

  ‘I don’t remember reading about that,’ Gino said.

  ‘It was one of the things the cops held back. He cut their Achilles tendons first, so they couldn’t get away . . .’

  Oh Jesus, Magozzi thought, feeling sick. That’s why she always wears the boots.

  ‘ . . . and then he slashed the femoral arteries. They bled out. It took a while.’

  ‘Christ.’ Gino looked a full shade paler than he had a minute ago.

  ‘Grace found Kathy and Daniella – those were her roommates – when she came back to her room after a night out. She was a smart girl. She didn’t go in. Just opened the door, turned on the light, then ran like hell. But there was a lot of blood, and she had to have seen that.’

  ‘Shit,’ Gino grumbled. ‘That would have put me right in a rubber room.’

  Annie looked at him. ‘She had a tough childhood. It made her strong. And the Valium didn’t hurt either. The school brought in a psychiatrist, and he put her on what he called a maintenance dose.’

  ‘Why the hell didn’t she just pack up and leave?’ Magozzi asked. ‘I would have.’

  ‘And go where? Back to a string of foster homes that had been their own nightmares? We were all the famil
y any of us had, and we stayed together.’ She looked off to the side briefly, frowning. ‘A better question is why the rest of us were so goddamned stupid we didn’t drag her out of there right then, before the other murders. We’ve been kicking ourselves for that ever since, but none of us knew what was coming.’ She took another deep breath and dug in her purse for a cigarette and lighter. ‘I’m going to smoke in a government building, fellas. You want to stop me, you’re going to have to wrestle me to the ground.’

  ‘Tempting,’ Gino said, handing her a cup to use as an ashtray.

  ‘Thanks.’ She took a long drag and made the task force room smell the way it had in the old days. ‘Marian Amburson and Johnny Bricker were killed a few days later, and the FBI came down on us like a swarm of locusts. While the rest of us were locked up in interview rooms for damn near two days, they had Grace to themselves. That’s when they set up the trap with Libbie Herold.’

  ‘The FBI agent.’

  ‘Right. What they did was put them both in a little house off in the corner of the campus, away from the high traffic of the dorms. Easier to stake out, they said, easier to protect. Grace was scared to death. She was a kid, you know? And they were asking her to play bait for a killer. She didn’t want to do it. All she wanted was to get the hell out of there, and I think if we’d been able to get to her, we would have all taken off right then and there.’

  ‘What do you mean, if you’d been able to get to her?’ Gino asked.

  Annie pursed her lips and frowned hard, looked out the window. ‘Even after they let the rest of us go, they wouldn’t let us see her. They said she was in “protective custody” and no one could see her; no one could talk to her. We didn’t even know where she was.’ She smiled bitterly at the memory. ‘What they were really doing, of course, was isolating her, taking away her support structure so the only ones she had left to depend on were them.’

  Jesus, Magozzi thought.

  ‘And then they started hammering on how if anyone else got killed it would be on Grace’s head unless she helped them nail the killer, and pretty soon they had her believing it. So they’ve got Grace locked away in this house with a very well-armed agent, and there’s nothing to worry about, they said, because Libbie always wore a wire and help was always just outside the door.’ She paused, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. ‘But somebody fucked up, big time. Maybe Libbie’s wire didn’t work, maybe the guys staking out the house looked away at the wrong time – who knows what really happened? One morning Libbie didn’t check in when she was supposed to, and when the agents went in after them, they found Libbie’s body in the bedroom, lying in a lake of blood, her legs nearly sawed off. They found Grace in the closet, all scrunched up against a back corner. She scratched those agents up pretty good when they tried to get her out, but she didn’t say a word. Didn’t scream, didn’t cry, nothing. She was in the psych ward at Atlanta General for a week. Then we took her away.’