Play To Kill

by P. J. Tracy

Smith nodded. 'We narrowed it down as much as we could. The fringe sites we've listed are limited to those dedicated exclusively to murder scenarios. Some of them are distinctly amateurish and clearly staged events; others are questionable. We need a program that spots the real crimes instantly so we can get law enforcement on the ground right away, before critical evidence and possible witnesses are lost. Now tell me what you pulled off the Internet this morning.'

  Roadrunner showed him a couple of print frames from the site. Smith looked at them without expression. The Feds were good at that. 'Did you get anything from this? Did you try a trace?'

  'No joy,' Harley said. We already passed it on to Agent Shafer so he can put your people on it, but they're not going to get anywhere. That post was flying around the world at the speed of light. Right now we're running some enhancement programs on the film to see if we've got a real murder or Memorex.'

  'Which won't do a lot of good without a location, and you can't get location without a trace.'

  Annie tipped her head and gave him a little smile that gave him a little funny feeling in the pit of his stomach. 'A picture's worth a thousand words, darlin'. Or is it ten thousand?' She scooped up the folder containing fringe sites and stood. 'Are you okay there, or do you want us to set up a desk for you?'

  Well, I think this will work for the time being' He sat quietly for a moment, watching and listening to the others as they scattered to their respective workstations, then opened his laptop to begin his daily report. He looked up from his screen when he heard a timid clicking, and stared in amazement as a sorry-looking dog with no tail climbed up onto the chair across the table and sat down facing him.

  * * *

  Chapter Seven

  Magozzi had never been one for self-examination, although the department shrink suggested it every time he shot someone. Well. The two times he had shot someone. It hadn't told him much then - killers had taken a shot at him, and he shot back, what was to introspect? - and it wasn't going to tell him much now.

  He'd had this silly idea as a young man that he'd make his way in the world, marry and have kids and a house and whatever the hell it was people called a normal life. That was the plan. That was what you grew up expecting when you were raised Italian Catholic with a family bigger than the population of Rhode Island and were stupid enough to believe that things would be the same for you as they had been for your parents. No one ever suggested that it might be otherwise; that your marriage would go south and you'd end up with a recliner and a twelve-inch TV and a blasted remnant of what your life was supposed to have been. And for sure no one ever told you that after the first marriage was erased like a mistake on a blackboard, you'd end up falling for a woman who would probably never say the word love out loud because it was a concept that eluded her. There would be no second marriage in his future; certainly no children, no shared house, no normal life. Not until he could manage to convince himself that he had to learn to live without Grace MacBride. He wasn't there yet. He wasn't even close, for all of Gino's prompting. But maybe he was stepping back, just a little; or maybe she was pushing him.

  She opened the door when he knocked, and there was the thin smile reticence made, the swinging black hair, the face that always made his breath stop in his throat. And as if that weren't enough, there was Charlie's tongue licking his palm, and he was so goddamned stupid he thought all of this was the welcome home he'd been waiting for his whole life.

  'Hey, Magozzi.'

  'Hey, Grace.'

  She stepped aside, reset the alarm when the door closed behind him, and just assumed he would follow her down the hall into the kitchen. When he didn't, she turned to look at him, puzzled. 'What's wrong?'

  'You're working with the Feds. You were center stage at the seminar last weekend.'

  Grace frowned at him. She didn't do facial expressions often, which made them strangely precious. 'It's just work, Magozzi.'

  'Tommy told us a little about what was going on. It's not your everyday average security-system setup. It's big. You never mentioned it.'

  Her frown deepened, almost making a line between her brows, but not quite. You want to know what I'm doing every minute, every day?'

  Oh yeah. That was exactly what he wanted. 'Of course not. It just pissed me off to hear the FBI's sitting on some new kind of Internet-connected homicide without sharing info with the cops. We're the guys on the ground. If this stuff is really happening all over the country, we ought to get some sort of heads-up.'

  'Only five confirmed so far.'

  'Oh, good. I feel better. So they're bringing in outside geeks because their geeks couldn't trace the posts, right? And they brought us in on absolutely nothing. Every decent- size department in the country works the Internet, and yet Tommy gets a private invitation instead of through protocol channels. Is there a gag order on this thing?'

  Grace blew out breath. 'Not that I know of. They're just trying to get something in place the locals can use before they bring everybody on board, which is where Monkeewrench comes in. And if you want to know anything more, you can come back to the kitchen instead of standing out here being a puke. I've got things on the stove.'

  Magozzi blinked as she stomped away down the hall. Puke?

  He walked into the kitchen and was immediately assaulted by food aromas that mellowed his mind. He'd read somewhere that the most sexually stimulating aroma for a man was cinnamon, but all he could smell was garlic, which probably was a good indicator of the way the night was going to go. "You have something to drink?'

  'Wine? Beer?'

  'Something stronger.'

  She set a whiskey, straight up, at the wooden table and sat down next to him. 'Bad day?'

  Magozzi sipped at the whiskey before he spoke again. 'We had a floater.'

  Grace winced. 'I hate that term.'

  'Makes it easier. Less personal.'

  'Homicide?'

  'No. Anant called just before I left the office. No bruising, hyoid bone intact, blood alcohol through the roof. It's off our desk, just not out of our minds yet. Plus, Tommy gave us a look at the Cleveland homicide video, which didn't do a whole lot to make the day brighter.'

  'Shall I try to cheer you up?'

  'Go for it.'

  'Harley's got a Fed in his house.'

  Magozzi actually smiled. 'Dead?'

  'Not yet. He's going to work with us on the software the Bureau wants us to create.'

  Which is?'

  'They want a program to separate staged death scenes on the Web from the real thing.'

  'Sounds impossible.'

  Grace shrugged. We've got some ideas. The agent brought us the classified films and files, and a huge stack of fringe sites that pop in and out on the Net we have to look at. It's creepy stuff, Magozzi, especially the fetish sites.'

  He nodded. 'We saw a few of those at the Cyber Crimes happy golf weekend last spring. Sex stuff, sadomasochism, like that.'

  'It's a lot worse than that. People are acting out murders on instant messaging, taking turns being the victim and the killer…'

  'How do you act out a murder on instant messaging?'

  Grace made a sour-pickle face. 'It's really depraved. They text this crap. One writes something like, "I'm plunging the knife into your stomach", then the other one writes back, "Oh my God, oh my God, I feel it going in, the blade is cold, my blood is hot…'"

  'Jesus.'

  'Yeah. And as disgusting as the texting is, the photos are worse, especially on the specific fetish sites. There's one totally dedicated to drowning, by the way.'

  Magozzi reached for his whiskey to get the bad taste of sick people out of his mouth. Yeah, well, let me know if you run across film of someone holding a bride underwater.'

  Charlie pushed his nose under Magozzi's arm, demanding attention, shifting the focus from all the weirdness in the world to more important things, like getting your ears scratched. 'Good old Charlie,' Magozzi bent to give him a doggy massage, and then realized that Grace hadn't said any
thing for a while. He looked up to see her staring at him. What?'

  She reached for his glass and took a sip, which was frightening. Grace hated whiskey. 'Nothing, really. Probably just a coincidence. We pulled a staged drowning off one of the fetish sites this morning, with a victim in a wedding dress. But it wasn't real.'

  'How do you know?'

  We did some tinkering with the resolution. Turns out it wasn't a bride at all. Just some guy in a wedding dress and a wig'

  Magozzi closed his eyes.

  Gino had a belly full of Angela's lasagna, a glass of terrific Chianti at his side, the Twins game on the big screen, and the massage cushion on shiatsu mode. Maybe there was some guy in the world who had it better than he did at the moment, but he couldn't imagine who it would be.

  'Daddy?'

  Such a gentle whisper from the doorway, somehow attached to the corners of the mouth so he smiled every time he heard it. 'Hey, kiddo. Have a seat. Top of the ninth and a tie ball game.'

  'Whoopee.' Helen sat in the chair next to him. She was almost sixteen, and scary beautiful. This year she'd go to her first prom with some sweaty-palmed, hormone-heavy scuzzball teenager who had pimples on his face and probably a condom in his wallet, and Gino was pretty sure he'd never survive the experience.

  'Okay, Daddy. Why did you try to put a block on YouTube?'

  Gino closed his eyes. 'Not just YouTube. I blocked MySpace, MyPage, a bunch of others. Took me hours.'

  Yeah, I know. You kind of suck at it, though.'

  'Excuse me?'

  Your blocks were lame, Daddy. You want me to show you how to do it?'

  What do you mean my blocks were lame? I followed the instructions to the letter.'

  Helen actually patted his head. He loved it when she did that, and he hated it. It was affection and patronization, all at the same time. 'A toddler could have busted through those blocks. You have to work on your computer skills.'

  Gino jabbed the mute button and wished he'd been born a hundred years before that jerk had gone into his garage and decided that personal computers were the future. Some fucking future. Sex and snuff films in every kid's bedroom. Christ. 'Computers are evil. Spawn of Satan. The downfall of civilization, and I don't want you online ever again.'

  Helen giggled, which was humiliating.

  'Seriously, Helen. There are things popping on those sites I blocked-'

  'Tried to block.'

  'Whatever. There are things on those sites I don't want you to see.'

  'Okay.'

  'Okay, what?'

  'You don't have to block the sites, Daddy. Just tell me to stay off them and I will.'

  'Really?'

  She smiled and bent to kiss his forehead, which was what her mother did when she thought he was being endearingly stupid. 'Really. Nite-nite.'

  The phone rang before her slippered feet hit the top step.

  'Rolseth.'

  'Film of our waterlogged boy bride was posted to the Web last night.'

  'No way.'

  'I'm looking at it on Grace's computer right now.'

  Who is this?'

  'We've got a homicide, Gino. This shows the guy being held underwater, struggling, and then the bubbles stop.'

  'Oh, man.'

  'And if Anant's time of death was even close, this film was posted either from the river, or real close. The scene is still hot enough to give us a chance, so pray the bad boy's on camera somewhere with his arm around our bride while you put on your dancing shoes. We'll start with the Tiara Club.'

  Gino shifted longing eyes to his glass of Chianti. 'Thanks for the invite, Leo, but I've had a bit of wine. Can't drive. You take it.'

  'I'll pick you up in twenty minutes.'

  Gino hung up the phone and sighed. Lord. He hadn't been to the Tiara Club since he'd dogged dealers when he was still a beat cop. He hated drag queens. They always hit on him.

  * * *

  Chapter Eight

  Gino was standing on the sidewalk with a glass of wine when Magozzi pulled up to the curb. 'There's a city ordinance against drinking on the streets, you know.'

  Gino drained the glass and set it under a bush. 'I wasn't on the street. I was on my own front walk which I laid with my own two hands on my own property, drinking my own Chianti. Damn stuff cost thirty bucks a bottle, and I wasn't about to toss it down the sink.' He got into the car and took a breath. 'Maybe the film you saw wasn't our guy. Maybe we're jumping the gun here, because Tommy was showing us all that crap and it was in your head, so…'

  Magozzi shoved a photo under Gino's nose and turned on the map light.

  'Oh shit. That's our scene.'

  'That's just a few frames from the film.'

  'Jeez, Leo, what's going on here?'

  Magozzi raised a brow. Gino never asked that question. He looked at a homicide and laid out the whole murder scenario within seconds. He was always wrong, of course, but at least he was sorting through the reasons that were always behind a killing. Except maybe this time there weren't any reasons that made sense.

  Gino was quiet for a long spell, which was scary, and then he started talking a mile a minute. 'So we've got Cleveland, but that was a beating, and probably a hate crime. That leaves us with four other murders on the Web, and now Minneapolis. What did Grace say? A stabbing, two shootings, and a strangulation, right? And then our drowning here. I've got it. I know what's going on.'

  Magozzi sighed. 'What?' he finally asked against his better judgment.

  We've got ourselves a traveling serial killer. Like maybe a truck driver, crossing the country. Or a traveling salesman. He goes from city to city, does his thing, and takes pictures. He gets his jollies by posting his dirty deeds on the Web, leaves town, and that's it. Kind of like Willy Loman, except he kills people.'

  'A Willy Loman serial killer.'

  'Sure, why not? He'd be damn near impossible to track - he's moving, practically undocumented, and he doesn't stay in any one place for long, so he's opportunistic. The victims are all different, and so are the MOs, out of sheer necessity. Like the Railroad Killer back in '97, remember? Hopped the freights, offed any convenient victim at a stop, hopped on the next freight, and away he went.'

  Magozzi sighed. 'That guy was an anomaly.'

  'Or a maybe a forecast of things to come.'

  'Serial killers aren't usually equal-opportunity types.'

  'That one was. Killed men, women, young, old, doctors, college kids, whoever was there, using whatever weapon was handy.'

  'The profilers said he was one in a million. The exception to the rule.'

  'Profile-schmofile. The world is changing. Maybe the killers are, too. So maybe our guy's not your classic bed- wetting, fire-starting sociopath who kills prostitutes because he can't kill his mother, but that doesn't mean he's not a psycho with serious bloodlust who found a great gig. We have to take a closer look at those other murders. Hell, we play our cards right, we could have this thing sewn up by noon tomorrow.'

  'Okay,' Magozzi humored his partner.

  'You're not buying my theory, are you?'

  'It's a fine theory.'

  Gino lifted his chin, out of pride or indignation, Magozzi wasn't sure. Yes, it is a fine theory. And it totally explains why the Feds are jumping this like hyenas on a crippled water buffalo. You've got interstate crime, cyber crime, and a serial killer all balled up into one.'

  Crippled water buffalo? 'You've been watching the National Geographic Channel during Food Network commercial breaks, haven't you?'

  'Scoff if you will, but this time I've got it nailed down. Go ahead. Try to poke a hole in it.'

  'Some of the murder films were posted to different sites.'

  Gino blew a raspberry. 'So what? The guy's a brainiac. He knows damn well the more he posts to one site, the more vulnerable he'll be to tracking. He's crossing all the t's.'

  'Okay. Serial killers generally stick to the same MO because they get particular satisfaction from it. The method is important to them.'
<
br />   'Wasn't important to the Railroad Killer.' Gino smiled, basking in the glory of his breakthrough. It wasn't often that he could point to a precedent to support his silly theories. 'Damn, I should drink Chianti more often when I'm trying to work this stuff out. It's like liquid muse.'

  'There's a couple other possibilities.'

  'Oh yeah? Dazzle me.'

  'People post crap on the Web every day. Everybody wants their fifteen minutes. Why not murderers? Which means none of these killings are necessarily related.'

  'Goddamnit, Leo, you're raining on my parade, 'cause that kind of makes sense. The Paris Hiltons of homicide.'

  'On the other hand…'

  You like the serial theory better.'

  'No. I was thinking of something else. Remember the I-94 drownings? Forty-some, mostly college kids on a toot falling into whatever river was handy.'

  Gino squirmed in his seat. You think you gotta remind me of that nightmare? We got the only one that finally went off the accidental list.'

  'So you also remember the NYPD dicks spending their retirement investigating all those drownings…'

  'Don't even bring that shit up, Leo.'

  'Can't help it. Those cops, who probably know a lot of things the rest of us don't, made a pretty good case for a nationwide network of killers, instead of one.'

  Gino folded his hands and rubbed his thumbs together. His grandfather had done that with an almost obsessive regularity, whenever he sat idle in the rocking chair that squeaked while he looked around at the progeny who had come for the annual awkward visit. You don't want to go there, Leo. I don't want to go there.'

  'You're right about that. But we have to consider it. I asked Grace to take a look at the timeline on those murders the Feds pulled off the Web.'

  'Excellent move. Unless any of them happened on the same day, my theory is still golden.'

  'Then you better start praying your theory sucks. If this guy's a traveler, he's gone. If he's local, we've got a shot.'

  'Yeah. There is that,' Gino sighed, watching out the window as the shiny city on the prairie deteriorated block by block.