by P. J. Tracy
But the others … the others couldn’t live like that. They, like most people, had to believe that the world was basically a good place; that bad things were an aberration. Life was simply too hard otherwise. Which was why, she thought, Pollyannas sometimes got their throats cut.
Grace was the last one of the group who should have called the cops, let alone come out here to wait for them. She knew that as well as anyone else, and yet nothing would have stopped her. It was the control thing, she supposed. She had to run everything. “Don’t hurt them, honey,” Annie had said to her on the way out, only half-kidding.
It wasn’t that Grace hated cops, exactly. She just had a better understanding than most that they were basically useless creatures, constricted by laws and politics and public opinion and, too much of the time, general stupidity. She wouldn’t hurt them, but she wasn’t going to genuflect either.
“Come on, come on,” she muttered impatiently, toes tapping, eyes busy as she scanned the lunchtime traffic. Every now and then a real truck with a real load passed in a cloud of diesel fumes, heading for one of the few remaining real warehouses down the block; but for the most part Hondas and Toyotas owned this part of Washington Avenue. Eventually, she supposed, they would force the trucks out altogether. God forbid particulate contamination of someone’s radicchio at one of the sidewalk cafés that kept springing up like weeds.
She started to pace, twenty steps north of the green door, twenty steps away from, so acutely aware of every detail of her surroundings that the sheer quantity of information bombarding her brain was almost painful. She memorized every face she passed, noted every car and truck, even analyzed the sudden, lumbering takeoff of a pigeon that was, in its own way, an alarm. She hated it out here. It was exhausting.
On her tenth circle past the green door she finally saw it, nosing around the corner two blocks down: a brown, nondescript late-model sedan that screamed UNMARKED POLICE CAR.
Inside the car, Magozzi turned onto Washington and passed a few unremarkable warehouses that looked like faded building blocks from a giant’s play set. Gino squinted out the window, looking for numbers, but most of the buildings were unmarked. “You need a damn GPS to find an address down here.”
“She said she’d wait for us on the street.”
Gino pointed to a small cluster of men milling around a semi that was backed up to a loading dock, chuffing puffs of white exhaust from the tailpipe. “Does she look like a Teamster?”
“She sounded like one on the phone.”
“You think she was yanking your chain?”
Magozzi shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. Hard to tell.”
Gino shivered a little and turned up the heater fan on the dashboard. “God, it’s cold. Not even Halloween and it’s twenty-five frigging degrees.”
They drove another block and spotted a tall woman in a black duster standing in front of a green door, a tangle of dark hair stirring in the wind. She dipped her chin at them in what Magozzi supposed was a signal, if you thought every human being on the planet was watching you, waiting for a sign.
“Doesn’t look like a Teamster,” Gino mused happily. “Not one bit.”
But she had the attitude. Magozzi saw it in her stance, in the cool blue gaze that flayed them alive while they were still strapped in their seats, helpless. God, he hated beautiful women.
He pulled over and slammed the car into park, meeting her eyes through the dusty windshield. Tough, he thought in the first instant, and then he looked a little closer and found a surprise. And afraid.
So this was Grace MacBride. Not what he’d expected at all.
Grace had typed them both before they got out of the car. Good cop, bad cop. The tall one with the quick, dark eyes was the bad cop, certainly the Detective Magozzi she’d talked to on the phone, and the only surprise was that he looked as Italian as his name. His partner was shorter, broader, and looked too much like a nice guy to actually be one. They both wore obligatory ill-fitting sport coats to accommodate their belt holsters, but Grace looked to the shirts beneath for the summary of their lives.
Magozzi was single, or more likely divorced, at his age. Late thirties, she guessed. A man alone, at any rate, who actually believed permanent press meant what it said.
His partner had a doting wife who spoiled him with homemade lunches he used to decorate the JCPenney shirt she had ironed so carefully. The expensive silk floral tie spoke of a fashion-conscious teenage daughter who would certainly be horrified to see him wearing it with tweed.
“Thank you for coming.” She kept her hands in her pockets and her eyes on theirs. “I’m Grace MacBride.”
“Detective Magozzi …”
“I know, Detective. I recognize your voice from the phone.” She almost smiled at the slight tightening around his eyes. Cops didn’t like to be interrupted. Especially by a woman.
“… and this is my partner, Detective Rolseth.”
The short one gave her a deceptively harmless smile as he asked, “You got a permit to carry that thing?”
Surprise, surprise, she thought. The vapid-looking one is paying attention. No way he should have been able to see her shoulder holster under the heavy duster. Not unless he was looking for it.
“Upstairs in my bag.”
“No kidding.” The smile remained fixed. “You carry all the time, or just when you’re about to meet a couple of cops?”
“All the time.”
“Huh. You mind me asking the caliber?”
Grace lifted one side of the duster and showed the Sig Sauer. The detective’s eyes softened briefly in a look usually reserved for lovers. Leave it to a cop to get mushy over a gun, she thought.
“A Sig, huh? Impressive. Nine-millimeter?”
“That’s right. Not a .22, Detective. That is what killed the girl in the cemetery, isn’t it?”
To their credit, neither man batted an eye. Magozzi even affected nonchalance, shoving his hands in his coat pockets and looking away from her, down the street, as if her knowing the caliber of the murder weapon had no significance at all. “You said you had some information on that homicide.”
“I said I might. I’m not sure.”
His right brow shifted upward a notch. “You might? You’re not sure? Funny. Sounded on the phone like London was burning.”
Magozzi could have sworn that none of her facial muscles moved, and yet something in her face conveyed instant disdain, as if he’d behaved very badly, and she’d expected nothing better.
“What I might have to show you is proprietary information, Detective Magozzi, and if it isn’t relevant, I won’t show it to you at all.”
He struggled to keep his tone even. “Really. And just when are you going to decide if it’s relevant?”
“I’m not. You are.” She pulled a chain bristling with plastic cards from a deep pocket. “Come with me.” She turned immediately, inserted a green plastic key card into a slot next to the door, and led the way inside.
She walked fast, boot heels clacking sharply on cement as she crossed the garage toward the elevator. Gino and Magozzi moved slower. Gino was watching a black duster flapping around long jeans-clad legs; Magozzi was looking around, seeing money in the empty space. People paid a healthy sum for secure parking places in this city, and there were at least twenty empty slots down here.
Gino nudged him with an elbow and spoke softly. “I’d say you two are running about neck and neck for the Miss Congeniality award.”
“Shut up, Gino.”
“Hey, don’t try so hard. You already got my vote.” His eyes found the monkey stencil when they stopped in front of the elevator door. He looked at Grace with a surprised smile. “You’re Monkeewrench?”
She nodded.
“No kidding. My daughter loves your games! Wait till I tell her I was here.”
She almost smiled. Magozzi waited for her face to crack and clatter in pieces to the cement floor.
“Children’s games and educational software are our brea
d and butter,” she was saying, and Magozzi frowned, trying to place the accent. Some of the consonants were soft, but the pattern of speech was East Coast rapid-fire, as if she didn’t want to talk very long and had to get the words out as quickly as possible. “But we’ve been working on a new project … that’s why I called you.” She slipped another plastic card—a blue one this time—into a slot and the doors of the elevator slid open. She lifted the heavy inner gate effortlessly with one hand.
“We?” Magozzi asked as they all stepped inside.
“I have four partners. They’re waiting upstairs.”
When the elevator ground to a halt, Grace lifted the gate onto a bright, open loft striped with sunlight. Computer stations were clustered in the center of the huge space in no apparent order, and fat black electrical cables snaked across the wooden floor. A somber group of people—three men and a heavyset woman—looked up as they entered.
“These are my partners,” Grace said, and Magozzi waited for the tiresome formality of introductions. Women always did that, even when you went to arrest them. Introduced you to everyone in the room while you were slapping on the cuffs, as if you’d dropped by for tea or something. But Grace MacBride surprised him, making a beeline for the desk of a tattooed, ponytailed man who looked like he belonged on Wide World of Wrestling, essentially ignoring the Ichabod Crane look-alike, the yuppie type in a polo shirt, and the incredibly fat woman who nonetheless made Magozzi’s heart thump a little harder.
“Harley, pull up number two,” Grace directed the muscle-bound guy in the ponytail. “Gentlemen?”
Magozzi and Gino joined her behind the man’s chair. It was like cozying up to a redwood. The rest of the people in the room kept their distance and their silence for the moment, which was just fine with Magozzi.
“What are we looking at?” He frowned over the man’s massive shoulder at a blank monitor.
“Just wait,” she said, and in the next instant a photograph filled the screen.
Magozzi and Gino both bent closer, squinting at a wide-angle shot of that morning’s Jane Doe when she was still draped over the angel statue in Lakewood Cemetery. The strange thing was that there were no cops in the picture, no gawkers, no crime-scene tape … just the body and the statue.
“Who took this shot?” Gino asked.
“I did.” The man called Harley rolled his chair to one side to give them a closer look, but neither cop needed it. They both took a step backward, eyes on Harley.
“Looks like you got there long before we did,” Gino said carefully.
“Is that what this morning’s crime scene looked like?” Grace MacBride asked.
Magozzi ignored her. It didn’t look like the crime scene. It was the crime scene. “The kids who found the body said they never left it until the first responders arrived,” he said, still looking at Harley. “They called 911 on a cell. Which means you were there before anybody … with the possible exception of the killer.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Harley muttered. “I am not your killer, and that is not the crime scene.”
“We were there, sir.” Gino’s voice was tight. “And obviously, so were you. Now when exactly did you take that picture?”
Harley threw up his hands. “Christ, I don’t know. When was it, Roadrunner?”
Magozzi’s head jerked left when Ichabod Crane piped up, “A couple weeks ago. Anyway, I can’t remember the date … Oh, wait a minute. It was Columbus Day, remember, Harley? You had to loan me twenty because the banks were closed—”
“Wait a minute.” Magozzi interrupted. “Just wait a minute. You took that shot a couple weeks ago?”
“I don’t think so.” Gino was looking at the picture again, shaking his head.
“We were all there,” the heavyset woman said. “Two weeks ago. All except Mitch.”
“That’s right,” Grace said.
“I didn’t want to be there,” the yuppie type muttered, “but I remember which night it was.…”
“All right.” Magozzi took a breath, looked from one to the other, his gaze finally settling on Grace. “Let’s hear it.”
“It’s a staged photograph.”
“Excuse me?” Gino was confused, belligerent now.
“It’s a game, darlin’.” The big woman got up from her chair and walked over to a coffeemaker on a counter, about twenty yards of peacock blue silk swishing around her. Neither detective could take his eyes off her. “Serial Killer Detective, SKUD for short. Our new computer game.”
“Perfect,” Gino muttered. “A game about serial killers. How uplifting.”
“Honey, we feed the market; we don’t create it,” Annie drawled. “It’s like Clue with more dead people, that’s all. Anyway, the player catches the killer by finding the clues in a series of crime-scene photos. That one’s murder number two. Take a closer look. That’s Roadrunner up there on that angel.”
Magozzi and Gino looked at the beanpole in Lycra, then back at the picture again. They both saw it at the same time, the details they’d missed at first glance because the general image was so close. The red dress, the long blond hair, the stiletto heels … they were all perfect. But their Jane Doe had had tiny hands with red lacquered nails. The hands in this photo were large and sinewy and obviously male. And the feet … the feet were huge. As was the protruding Adam’s apple.
Gino glanced down at Roadrunner’s size fourteens, then up at his neck. “Jesus,” he whispered. “It is him.”
Magozzi continued to stare at the picture, his mind racing, his blood pressure rising. The damn thing was part of a game. He had to struggle to focus on what Grace MacBride was saying.
“… most of the murder scenarios in the game are pretty ordinary. But the setting for this one was so unique that the odds against a coincidence seemed …”
“Astronomical,” Magozzi said, turning his head to look at her.
“Yes.”
He looked at the fat woman. “You said it was a new game.”
“Brand-new. It hasn’t been released yet.”
“So the only people who have seen this photo are in this room.”
Harley snorted and spun his chair around. “You think we’d call you if one of us was the killer?”
“Maybe,” Magozzi said evenly.
Grace MacBride walked over to Roadrunner’s desk and laid her hand on his shoulder. “How many?” she asked quietly.
Roadrunner looked up at her. “Five hundred eighty-seven.” He glanced over at Gino, then at Magozzi. “We put the game on our local test website over a week ago. As of this morning, we’ve had 587 hits on that site—”
“What?” Gino exploded. “This thing’s on the Internet?”
“We shut it down!” Roadrunner was defensive. “Right after we saw the paper this morning.”
“Which means that only 587 people besides us have seen these photos,” Grace MacBride interjected.
“Only?!” Gino bellowed.
Grace leveled her gaze on Gino. “I don’t know what you’re so upset about. A few hours ago you had an infinite number of suspects. We’ve just narrowed the field for you, down to 587.”
“Plus five,” Magozzi said pointedly, looking at each of them in turn, Grace MacBride last. “And if you don’t know what Detective Rolseth is upset about, then you obviously haven’t considered that if you hadn’t put this game on the web, a very young woman might still be alive.” He paused for a moment to let that sink in, then felt his mind screech to a halt as something Annie had said finally registered. “Wait a minute. You said this was the second photo. What was the first?”
Harley turned back to his keyboard and started typing. “I’ll pull it up, but it’s not nearly as dramatic as number two. Here it is.” He rolled his chair to the side to give the detectives a closer look. “Number one. Nothing special. Just a jogger by the river.”
Magozzi heard Grace MacBride catch her breath next to him, wondered briefly what that was about, then was immediately distracted by the photo on Harley’
s monitor.
He and Gino stared at it for a long time, both faces devoid of emotion. Magozzi was remembering yesterday morning, kneeling next to the body of the jogger across from Rambachan, watching gloved fingers pry open the dead mouth, smelling childhood candy in a corpse. “What’s wrong with his mouth?” he asked.
Harley brightened a little. “That’s a clue. All you do is click on it.” He started to reach for the mouse, but Magozzi’s words stopped him cold.
“Tell me it’s not a piece of red licorice.”
Harley turned his head slowly to look at him. “How’d you know that?” he asked, but before the words were out of his mouth he knew. They all knew, but the guy in the polo shirt had to hear it out loud.
“A jogger was murdered?” he asked weakly.
Gino said, “Yesterday morning. Don’t any of you people watch the news?”
“And he had a piece of red licorice in his mouth,” Magozzi added. “And that wasn’t on the news.”
The silence lasted only a few seconds, as long as it took them all to absorb the reality of what had already happened, and the chilling possibility of what might lie ahead.
“Oh Lord,” Annie finally whispered. “Oh Lord in heaven. He’s playing the game. He’s doing them all.”
Magozzi felt his chest tighten. “How many is ‘all’?”
“Twenty,” Mitch said flatly, fumbling behind him for a chair, then sagging into it. “There’s a total of twenty in the game.”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Gino whispered.
Roadrunner flapped his arms, frustrated. “No, no, no, you don’t understand how this works! Yes, there are twenty murders in the game, but no one’s seen anything past murder seven.”
“How do you know that?” asked Magozzi.
Roadrunner sighed impatiently. “Because I monitor this thing 24–7, that’s how. You have to solve one level before you can proceed to the next and none of the players on the site have gotten past murder seven. Some of them haven’t gotten that far.”