Want to Play?

by P. J. Tracy

  Gino was leaning against the wall by the door, looking down at the floor. Magozzi was watching Annie look around aimlessly, as if she’d misplaced the thread of her thought and hoped to see it somewhere in the room.

  Finally she took a last drag off her cigarette and dropped it in the coffee at the bottom of the cup. ‘Anyway, that’s what happened in Atlanta.’ She slid her eyes sideways to look at Magozzi. ‘We don’t ever talk about this; not in front of Grace.’

  Magozzi nodded, watched her slip her purse strap over her shoulder and head for the door. Gino stepped aside and opened it for her.

  She turned back at the last minute. ‘Your computer guy, Tommy What’s-his-name.’

  ‘Espinoza.’

  Annie nodded. ‘He’s good. He was making all the right moves trying to hack into that sealed FBI file.’

  ‘What makes you think he’s trying to do that?’

  Annie shrugged prettily. ‘He left us in the room for a minute. And don’t blame the boy. He locked up his computer first, and it was a very sophisticated lock. Would have stopped all but about three people in the world.’

  Magozzi smiled ruefully. ‘And Roadrunner’s one of them.’

  ‘Yes, he is. Anyway, on the off chance he ever breaks through, there’s probably a thing or two in that file that might give you pause. Might as well hear it from me first.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Another thing the FBI used to get Grace to co-operate. They were going to reopen a dismissed case on one of her friends, make a little trouble if they could.’

  ‘And that case was . . . ?’

  Annie touched the sides of her mouth with a finger to keep her lipstick in line. ‘I stabbed a man to death the year before I entered the U.’ She looked at Gino, whose mouth had dropped open again, and gave him a smile that would have blown a less substantial man away. ‘Flies, sugar,’ she reminded him with a tap under his chin, and then she sashayed out the door.

  Grace was waiting for her by the elevator. She was leaning against the wall on one shoulder, looking like a model-turned-cowboy in the long black duster, wearing one of those tiny, knowing smiles that always gave Annie the creeps.

  ‘You spilled your guts, didn’t you, Annie?’

  ‘Actually, I spilled your guts, darlin’. And a little bit of mine.’

  Grace pushed away from the wall and looked down at the floor, dark hair curtaining the sides of her face. ‘If I’d thought they needed to know everything, I would have told them. I can talk about it now. I’m not going to fall to pieces.’

  ‘They did need to know everything, if only to keep them on track and off our backs, and there’s no reason on God’s green earth that you should ever have to talk about it. Not to them, not to anyone.’ Annie’s mouth was set in a stubborn line. ‘Damnit. I was getting to like Minneapolis. If that Tommy character gets into that file, our cover’s blown and we’re going to have to leave, start all over again.’

  Grace pushed the elevator button, her eyes on the little lights over the door. ‘We did what we could. It’s a waiting game now.’

  30

  For a full five minutes after Annie Belinsky had left the room, Magozzi and Gino just sat in the chairs that faced the board of victim photos, saying nothing, digesting what she had told them about Atlanta.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ Magozzi finally asked.

  Gino grunted. ‘That I should go out and shoot an FBI agent, just to make myself feel better.’

  ‘There were cops there, too. You can’t lay it all on the FBI.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. That’s even worse.’ He turned his head and looked at Magozzi. ‘It doesn’t take MacBride off the suspect list, you know. If anything, it makes her a better pick. It’d be a real kick for a killer, wouldn’t it? Off a bunch of people and have everyone feeling sorry for you, thinking you’re a victim? And there’s another thing that bothers me. If she’s not the killer and she really went through all that shit, you’d think she’d be loony tunes for the rest of her life.’

  ‘Apparently she was, for a while.’

  ‘A week. You could fake it for that long standing on your head.’

  Magozzi sighed. ‘She didn’t do it, Gino.’

  ‘You sure you’re not doing your thinking a little south of the border?’

  Magozzi leaned back in the chair and rubbed at his eyes. ‘I’m not sure I’m thinking at all. Let’s work it out.’

  There was a big old blackboard in the back of the task force room that hadn’t been used in years. Everything was neater now. They used tagboards with digital photos and computer comparison charts and probability charts and graphics that would have made Disney weep. But for Gino Rolseth and Leo Magozzi, there was something about writing stuff down with your own hand that helped the thinking process.

  They went to the board now and started diagramming it all out, breathing in the dusty smell of chalk, rubbing their fingers together where all the moisture had been sucked out of their skin.

  ‘Okay,’ Gino said, stepping back and taking a look. ‘It’s just as goddamned clear as a bell, isn’t it? About ten years ago you’ve got a series of killings at Georgia State, and the Monkeewrench people are in it up to their eyeballs. Now we’ve got a series of killings in Minneapolis and guess who’s here? You know what the odds are that any human being on the planet will be directly affected by a serial killer in his lifetime? And these people hit the jackpot twice. One of them did it. No doubt about it.’

  Magozzi looked at the board for a long time. ‘Still doesn’t make sense that one of them would want to ruin their own company.’

  ‘Excuse me.’ Gino rolled his eyes. ‘But you gotta assume whoever dresses up a girl, hangs her on a cemetery statue, then shoots her in the head isn’t exactly taking the elevator all the way to the top floor. Besides, every one of them’s got enough money stashed to last a lifetime. So they lose the company. So what? Ain’t like they’re gonna be homeless.’

  Magozzi looked at the list of Georgia killings, then the list of Minneapolis killings, lines connecting all of them to the five people who had just been in this room. ‘What’s the motive?’

  ‘Hell, I don’t know. One of them doesn’t like the direction the company’s going – this game was a big jump from the little birdie cartoons they were programming for the kindergarten crowd, you know . . .’

  ‘Mitch Cross doesn’t seem to like the game much. He wouldn’t even go to the photo shoot in the cemetery, remember?’

  ‘There you go.’

  ‘Okay,’ Magozzi said. ‘So the game offends Cross’s sensibilities and he thinks it’s a bad business decision. But he’s outvoted, so he snaps and decides to destroy the company he helped build by killing a bunch of people he never met. Kind of an overreaction, don’t you think?’

  ‘He didn’t just “snap.” The guy’s a maniac. An out-of-control killer. He already offed five people back in Georgia, remember?’

  ‘What was his motive then?’

  Gino pursed his lips and stared at the board, looking for the answer. ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘And if he’s that out of control how come there’s a ten-year interval between killings?’

  Gino pulled at his tie, jaw jutting. ‘Don’t know that, either.’

  ‘Let’s plug somebody else in. How about Belinsky? She just blithely informed us that she stabbed a man to death before her freshman year in college, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘Don’t try to break my heart here, Leo. You’re just going after her because I went after MacBride.’ He took a step back from the board and scrubbed at the patch of whiskers he’d missed. ‘Truth is, I don’t really like either one of them, sexist pig that I am. I’ve had it in my head right from the start that it’s a man. What about the other two? Mutt and Jeff?’

  ‘Nothing jumped out in what Tommy dug up on them from the last ten years. Aside from the fact that Roadrunner sees a shrink twice a week and Harley has a subscription to Soldier of Fortune.’

  ‘Soldier
of Fortune, huh? That’s scary.’

  ‘He gets Architectural Digest, too. That’s scarier yet.’ Magozzi went to the front desk and brought back the file on the Monkeewrench partners Tommy Espinoza had left on his desk the night before. ‘I gave it a quick read-through, but nothing popped for me either. The short and sweet is that Harley Davidson turns out to be quite the bon vivant. Second lowest net worth, after Belinsky. Expensive taste, patron of the arts, wine connoisseur . . .’

  ‘You’ve gotta be kidding.’

  ‘See for yourself. Spends money like a drunken sailor. Has about five million in classic motorcycles stashed in the garage of his little ten-thousand-square-foot house and his dining-out expenses would pay our salaries.’

  ‘That’s obscene.’ Gino sat down and started pawing through the printout on Harley. ‘Holy shit. A hundred and fifteen thousand dollars on Bordeaux futures last month? What the hell is a Bordeaux future?’

  ‘Like corn futures, hog futures, only wine. Reads like a Robin Leach script for “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” doesn’t it?’

  Gino looked up. ‘This is bizarre. But not necessarily incriminating. I was hoping for a correspondence course in serial killing, something like that.’

  Magozzi smiled. ‘He’s got a Victoria’s Secret charge account that runs him a few grand a year.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Is he wearing it or giving it away?’

  ‘That, Tommy couldn’t tell us. But put that together with dinners out and his romantic weekend getaways to Saint Bart’s and I’m guessing he likes the ladies.’

  Gino looked thoroughly depressed. ‘Shit. And I wanted to hate this guy. How can you hate a guy like that? What about the Human Pencil?’

  Magozzi pulled up a chair next to Gino. ‘Can’t tell much from the kind of records Tommy was able to access, except the shrink thing. He’s got a nice fat investment portfolio he leaves pretty much alone, a house on Nicollet Island, and nothing really interesting in the money trail. Aside from bicycle and computer stuff, and some pretty generous charitable donations, he doesn’t seem to spend any.’

  ‘What kind of charities?’

  Magozzi shrugged. ‘Homeless shelters, domestic-abuse centers, youth-at-risk programs, stuff like that.’

  ‘The kind of places he probably spent a lot of time in as a kid.’

  ‘Probably.’

  Gino sighed and closed the folder. ‘He’s kind of a sad sack, isn’t he?’

  ‘A sad sack with a carry permit and four registered guns.’

  ‘Not exactly a standout in that group. Still, he’s a misfit weirdo loner who most likely had a bad childhood, keeps to himself, and likes his guns. Is that classic, or what?’

  Magozzi sighed and ran a hand through his hair. ‘Actually, it sounds like half the cops on the force.’ He stood up and went back to the blackboard. ‘The truth is we could plug in any one of the five and make them fit some psycho-in-training profile. These are strange people, Gino.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘But there’s nothing solid that says any of them are doing the killing.’ Magozzi bounced his chalk in his hands a few times, then drew an X with a circle around it beneath the list of Monkeewrench names.

  ‘That’s a kiss inside a hug, right?’ Gino asked.

  ‘That’s our other option, Mr X. Some creep fixated on Grace, did the killings in Georgia, lost track of them, or maybe went to the big house for a while on another rap. He gets out, finds them, and starts killing again.’ He cocked his head and looked at Gino. ‘It’s a possibility. We’ve got to consider it.’

  ‘Along with the possibility that the two series of murders aren’t related at all. That this is just some new psycho playing their stupid-ass game.’ He blew out a disgusted sigh. ‘So basically we’re nowhere, right where we’ve been all along.’

  Magozzi nodded. ‘I’d say that just about sums it up.’ He tossed the chalk in the tray and brushed the white dust from his fingers. ‘And I’ll tell you something else. We’ve got to find a way to put round-the-clock tails on these people.’

  ‘What are we going to use, the Girl Scouts? Half the law enforcement in the state is out at the mall. We’re so short on the street I was thinking of robbing a bank myself.’

  ‘We’ve got to do it. Monkeewrench is in this too deep. If it’s not one of them, it’s someone with a serious beef against one or all of them. And you can bet your pension that if he’s starting to make contact, he’s feeling a need to get closer. That’s straight out of Profiling for Dummies. And e-mails aren’t going to keep him satisfied for long.’

  Gino swiped a hand over the top of his thinning hair. ‘So you think he’s going to try to make personal contact soon.’

  ‘I think it’s a pretty safe bet.’

  Detective Aaron Langer stopped by one of the huge concrete pillars that supported the parking deck above and watched two women and four kids pile out of an old Suburban. He followed them with his eyes until they made it to the walkway that led to Macy’s, wondering what the hell was wrong with people these days. You tell them there’s probably going to be a shooting at the Mall of America and what do they do? They bring their kids. Jesus.

  He started walking back toward Nordstrom, head swiveling right and left, trying to watch everything. It was just after one o’clock and the parking decks were almost full. When he’d dressed for work this morning he’d imagined patrolling an enormous empty slab of concrete, so he’d worn the warm Perry Ellis overcoat his wife had gotten him for his birthday. Now the black wool was filthy from brushing up against cars that weren’t supposed to be there, that shouldn’t have been there if their owners had had half a brain. The upside was that the killer probably wouldn’t be able to find a parking space.

  They had two uniforms and four mall security types on each level of the massive parking decks, twenty unmarkeds cruising the ramps nonstop, and ten detectives on foot coordinating the patrols. He was responsible for levels P-4 through P-7 in the West ramps, an assignment that had particularly pleased his wife since he’d be close to Macy’s, and that had simply blown him away. Here he was putting himself in the line of fire, and all she could think of was that he could go in on a break and pick up a pair of the nylons she liked while they were still on sale. He’d told her he probably wouldn’t have time, what with dodging a psychopathic killer and all, and she’d just rolled her eyes and told him not to be silly, that there was no way a murderer would show up at the one place everyone was expecting him.

  And that, he assumed, was undoubtedly the same logic all these other shoppers were employing today. And they were probably right.

  He was scanning the rows to his right and nearly ran into a guy from Channel 10 with a handheld. Another reason for the killer to stay home. The media was damn near as strong a presence on the parking decks as law enforcement. So far he’d had six requests for on-camera interviews, interrupting his surveillance, irritating the hell out of him.

  ‘Hey! Watch where you’re going, buddy!’ the cameraman complained.

  Langer tapped the leather badge clipped to his breast pocket.

  ‘Oh, sorry, Detective.’ The camera whirred to life. ‘Could you answer a few questions, Detective?’

  ‘Sorry, I’m working.’

  The cameraman trotted after him, infuriatingly persistent. ‘How long do the police plan to keep up this kind of intensive patrolling, Detective? Are there other areas of the city being left without protection while so much of the force is diverted to the Mall of America?’

  Langer stopped and looked down at the shoes that were too thin-soled for walking on cold concrete, then he looked straight up into the camera and smiled. This guy wanted an interview? He’d give him a friggin’ interview. ‘What are you doing here, buddy? Making a snuff film? Trying to catch a murder on tape so you can show it to the kiddies on the five-o’clock news?’

  The camera shut off abruptly, and the cameraman eased the unit off his shoulder and l
ooked at Langer with a wounded expression. ‘Hey, I’m just doing my job here. Covering the story.’

  ‘Really. You know maybe I could buy that if you’d just come down here to film all the hullabaloo and then left, but the fact is you’ve all been here as long as I have.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘That’s three hours so far, so don’t give me that business about covering a story when what you’re really doing is waiting for it to happen, which in this case means you’re waiting to film one of your viewers getting her head blown off. Now I don’t know what that makes you, but I do know it ought to make you ashamed.’

  Langer walked away, disgusted with the media, disgusted with the kind of society that had created the media, and mostly disgusted with himself for letting it get to him.

  ‘Langer?’

  He keyed his shoulder radio and turned his mouth to talk into it. ‘Right here.’

  ‘We’ve got your deck covered if you want to break for lunch.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Turn around.’

  He did, and saw one of the unmarkeds pulling up beside him, Detective Peterson grinning behind the wheel. He’d been assigned as one of the floaters who covered sectors for the rest of them when they took a break. ‘How’re they hanging, guy?’