by P. J. Tracy
“This is unbelievable.”
The other amazing heads turned to look at Louise Washington, the department’s showcase detective. Half Hispanic, half black, a woman and a lesbian to boot, she satisfied multiple minority groups. That she was damned good at her job seemed incidental to everyone except the cops who worked with her.
“Bleep,” Gino blatted from his place next to the door. “That was not in the form of a question.”
“Isn’t this unbelievable?” Louise corrected herself, which was the signal for Chief Malcherson to straighten up in his corner and pretend to take charge.
“There is no cause for levity here. And no excuse for it. Two innocent young people are dead, and we have a psychopath roaming the streets of our city.”
Gino wiped his mouth with a beefy hand while the amazing heads dropped in unison and pretended to study the photos on their desks. The chief was well-intentioned, but he’d been off the streets for a long time and tended to talk like an old Humphrey Bogart movie. Magozzi broke in before someone blew it and laughed out loud.
“Okay, listen up. Whoever this actor is, he took down two in less than twenty-four hours, so we’ve got no breathing time here. The first two murders followed the game murders almost exactly and he’s doing them in order. If this guy stays true to form, we know where the third one is supposed to go down; when is another matter. Could be tonight, could be this weekend. Everyone got photo number three?”
There was a rustle of papers and then a voice called out from the back of the room, “Hey, that guy’s sitting on a toilet, right?”
Magozzi looked back at Johnny McLaren sprawled all over a seat in the back row. He was the youngest detective on the force; bright red hair, sunny disposition, serious gambling problem.
“Can’t get anything past you, Johnny. According to the game, murder three takes place during a party on a river-boat—a paddle wheeler, specifically. Normally we’ve got a few of those running on both the Saint Croix and the Mississippi, lunch, dinner, party cruises during high season, leaf tours through October, but we caught a big break this week. The only one running before the weekend is the Nicollet. They’ve got a wedding reception going tonight.”
“Bunch of fools,” Louise muttered. “It’s going down to the teens tonight. Nothing like wearing a parka over your wedding gown.”
“Too bad we can’t just shut it down,” Patrol Sergeant Freedman said, and heads turned to look at him. James Earl Jones lived in Freedman’s voice box, and the man couldn’t say two words without commanding the complete attention of anyone within listening range.
“Nice going, Freedman,” Gino spoke up. “A black man advocating a police state. Let me get on the horn to the NAACP, see if we can’t get you nominated for an Image award.”
Freedman grinned at him. “Hey, I’m all for a police state. I just want to run it.” And then to Magozzi, “You boys reach out to the family?”
Magozzi nodded. “Yeah, and that’s the bad news. The blushing bride is Tammy Hammond.”
“Oh shit,” Louise Washington said. “The Hammond wedding? As in Foster and Char Hammond?”
“None other. And let me tell you, these people have the entire ‘A’ list on their speed dial. By the time Gino and I got to their place, Chief Malcherson had had calls from the mayor, four council members, the attorney general, and Senator Washburn.” Chief Malcherson confirmed this with a miserable nod. “The message was pretty clear. Under no circumstances are we to in any way disrupt the Hammond wedding reception.”
“Wait a minute.” Tinker Lewis waved a hefty, tweed-coated arm from the back. He had sad brown eyes and a hairline that had receded halfway to Australia. Ten years in Homicide and he was still one of the gentlest men Magozzi knew. “We’re supposed to just sit by and watch this thing go down?”
“They don’t think anything’s going to go down,” Magozzi said, “and they might be right. There’s another charter Saturday night—some 3M exec’s retirement party—and if I were the killer, that’s the one I’d pick. No security, as compared to Argo covering tonight’s cruise.”
“Argo? Red Chilton’s bunch?”
Magozzi nodded. All but the youngest in the room had worked with Red Chilton back when he was in Homicide, wearing cheap sport coats and driving five-year-old cars like the rest of them. Seven years ago he’d taken early retirement and started Argo Security with some of the best ex-cops in law enforcement. Now he was wearing Italian suits and driving a Porsche.
“There are some pretty high-profilers invited tonight. The mayor, for one, couple of state congressmen, some film people. Hammond contracted with Argo a long time ago for this, and Red’s bringing damn near his whole roster. There’ll be twenty of them on site tonight, all armed, funneled gate, metal detectors, the whole nine yards. Hammond did agree to a ‘small, very discreet police presence,’ but that’s it. It isn’t going to be our show.”
Tinker grunted. “So what do we get?”
“Couple of squads and uniforms in the lot, six people on board dressed as guests. Gino talked to Red, brought him up to speed so his people don’t take down our people and vice versa.”
“So we’ll have thirty armed people and a paddleboat,” Freedman said. “Hell, we could point that thing south and probably take Louisiana.”
Louise Washington was shaking her head. “Our boy’s never going to show tonight.”
“Maybe not, but if he does, this is our best shot at taking the guy down. This is the only murder in the game in a contained environment. The next one, for instance, takes place at the Mall of America, and I don’t even want to think about how we’d cover that.
“Freedman, you and McLaren are heading up the detail. Gino will give you the rest of your roster when we’re finished here. Reception starts at seven. Red’s expecting you at the boat landing at five. Take a good look at his security arrangements. You see any holes, check back in and we’ll find a way to fill them. Any questions?”
“Yeah, I got a question,” McLaren said. “Is anyone telling the people coming to this thing there might be a little murder problem?”
“Oh yeah.” Magozzi stared at the back wall and remembered that glitter of excitement in Tammy Hammond’s eyes. “Hammond’s going to make an announcement after the ceremony, and Red’s people will do the same at the gate for anyone who skipped the church scene, but I don’t think it’s going to keep anyone away, not with all the security in place. Chief already called the politicos he knew, and they’re still coming, and the rest of them … I don’t know … I get the feeling they’re getting off on it a little.”
Louise made a face. “Rich people are totally weird.”
Magozzi glanced at his watch and hurried along. “Anyway, that’s the setup at the boat. In the meantime, some of the rest of you are going to be working the list of people who registered to play the game on the test site. We need to crosscheck with public records and narrow it down so we don’t have to knock on over five hundred doors. Some of the addresses are going to be bogus—”
“Like the killer’s, for instance,” Louise snorted.
“Maybe. Maybe not. This guy’s a gamer, remember. He wants to play. Putting his real name and address on that list, looking us in the eye when we go to interview … that kind of thing has to be worth big points, so pay real close attention to the possibles. Eliminate the seniors, kids under ten, quadriplegics … anybody else, look at hard. Once we get it honed down, we’ll hit the streets for the locals.”
“Forget the out-of-towners?” Freedman asked.
Magozzi shook his head. “Absolutely not. Some guy from Singapore could be sitting in the downtown Hyatt playing on his laptop. These murders were bang-bang, two nights in a row. Could very well be an out-of-towner making his mark before he heads home. Check every name on the list, and I mean every single one. Call whoever you have to, anywhere you have to. Do what you can by computer and phone; if you run across a possible out-of-state, or even out-of-the-country, pass it on to Gino, and he’
ll deal with asking the locals for an on-site. Chief gave us open overtime on this, so anyone who wants to pull a double tonight, talk to Gino when we’re through here. He’ll set you up.”
“What about the idiots that put this game out there in the first place?” Tinker Lewis grumbled.
“We’re going to look at them.” Magozzi hopped off the desk and handed a single sheet of paper to Tommy Espinoza, a slight, twitchy man in the front row wearing a corduroy jacket over denim. He had his Latin father’s dark coloring, his Swedish mother’s blue eyes, and a pear-shaped belly that belonged to Cheetos. Technically he was a detective, but in actuality, he never saw the streets. As the resident computer genius, he was far too valuable at the keyboard to risk outside the building.
“Those are the stats on the five Monkeewrench partners, Tommy. Put together profiles on all of them ASAP. Before you leave tonight.”
“You think one of them’s good for it?”
“In my gut, no. They’re equal partners, and if this game goes in the dumper, they’ve each got a lot to lose. But they’re on the list. Anybody with access to the game is on the list, and they sure as hell have access.”
“Did you ask any of these people if they had alibis?” Louise asked.
“Yeah,” Gino said. “We learned that in our mail-order detective course. Every one of them was alone during both murders. Cross is the only one who’s married, but his wife was in LA when the jogger bought it, and he was alone at the office until late last night, so she can’t place him for either one.”
Espinoza glanced at the five names, then looked up at Magozzi. “You’re kidding, right? Roadrunner?”
“That’s the name on his license,” Gino put in.
“No shit?”
“No shit.”
Espinoza looked down at the names again, head shaking. “And Harley Davidson? Tell me these are not the names they were born with.”
“You tell us, Tommy. By the way, McLaren, Freedman, you’ve got MDL blowups of these people in your handout. Special eye out for any of them tonight. They’re not on the guest list. Gino?”
“I’m done.”
“Chief?” He looked over at Chief Malcherson, who was still standing in exactly the same spot, deep into the cool-as-a-cucumber routine that fooled absolutely no one. His cheeks were too red, his eyes as busy as his body was still. Magozzi figured he’d blow a vessel in about five minutes. “Anything you want to add?”
“Just that we’ve got a lot of media downstairs. They’re all over this angel thing. Avoid them if you can, refer them to me, Magozzi, or Rolseth if you can’t. I don’t want to hear a lot of ‘no comments’ on the news tonight. Sounds bad.”
Chapter 17
You wouldn’t know it to look at me, thought Wilbur Daniels, but in my heart, this is the man I have always been. A wild man. A risk-taker. A sexual adventurer, willing to try anything once, desperate to taste the thrills of the bizarre, the exotic, the near-perverted, if someone would only ask.
And finally, someone had.
Within the past ten minutes, Wilbur had decided that there was indeed a god, and that occasionally he smiled on paunchy, middle-aged men with lives as colorless as the few remaining wisps on their otherwise bald pates.
There was pain involved, of course. These flabby legs that had spent the last twenty years in the cubbyhole of a desk were not used to the demands of this demeaning position. An underused, flaccid quadricep was pinching, convulsing, threatening to knot, and yet he would not wish for the cramping to stop; would not move an inch to ease the pain that only seemed to heighten this sinful pleasure. If the gang could see me now, he sang in his mind, imagining the shock and revulsion on the faces of those who thought they knew him. The image pleased him, and an unmanly giggle bubbled from his lips. He apologized immediately, only to be told that one should never apologize for finding joy, no matter how dark the deed that created it. Oh, yes. Oh, God, that was so true.
In the next second he bit down on his own hand to stifle a cry of ecstasy, and for a fleeting moment, wondered how he would later explain the wound. But then he was asked to assume a new, deliciously naughty position, and he forgot his hand, and the cramp in his thigh, and the whole of his miserable life at a sensation so intense he doubted that his heart would survive the experience.
The gun didn’t frighten him when it appeared. Well, all right; it did, a little, but that was part of it, wasn’t it? Didn’t the omnipresent specter of death always intensify the pleasures one extracted from life? And it was certainly intensifying this one.
As the barrel pressed against his temple in the ultimate threat, he felt a corresponding surge of pleasure so exquisite he thought he might explode.
And then, to a degree, he did.
Patrol Sergeant Eaton Freedman fastened his belt holster and shrugged into a pin-striped suitcoat that had been too tight before he tried to stuff a gun under it. You’d have to be blind not to see the bulge, but most people who looked at Eaton Freedman never saw the details, just a really big black man.
Detective Johnny McLaren rapped on the door frame of Freedman’s office. “Stop preening, Freedman, we gotta go … ooh. Sharp.”
Freedman looked critically at McLaren’s maroon polyester blazer. “You get that at Goodwill?”
McLaren looked indignant. “Damn right. Five bucks.”
“We’re supposed to dress like wedding guests.”
“Hey, I wore this to my wedding.”
“Which explains your divorce. Besides, it clashes with your hair.”
“What a team. No one will notice us, no way. A big, black linebacker and a carrot-top Mick. What was Magozzi thinking, picking the two of us?”
Freedman’s laughter rumbled like thunder. “You don’t know?”
“’Cause we’re the sharpest, best guys on the force?”
“How about because we both live ten minutes away and could get to our good duds faster than anybody else?”
McLaren looked crestfallen.
“And because we’re the sharpest, best guys on the force,” Freedman added.
“That’s what I thought. Let’s go. You get any prettier the groom’ll dump the bride and marry you.”
When Freedman and McLaren nosed the unmarked up to the Nicollet’s access gate a half hour later, two bruisers in black suits came out of nowhere and flanked the doors. Freedman rolled down his window and looked up at a guy with no neck and a shaved head. “Berg, you son of a bitch, what happened to your hair, man?”
The guy’s face remained expressionless. “Women kept pulling on it in the throes of passion, so I shaved it off. Get out of there, Freedman, so I can frisk your fat black ass.”
“In your dreams, you fish-belly Swede.” Freedman grinned, and then in a stage whisper to McLaren, “I had this guy walkin’ the Hennepin patrol a while back. He wanted me the first time he saw me. Was about to file sek-shu-al harassment when Red Chilton up and hired him away from us.”
Berg ducked down and filled the window opening with his head, looking skeptically at McLaren’s slight form. “I don’t know about you new cops. You all look little.”
“Yeah, but we got bigger guns,” McLaren said, touching a finger to his forehead. “Johnny McLaren.”
“Hey, Fritz, come on around here and meet Patrol Sergeant Eaton Freedman and Johnny McLaren.”
The second bruiser bent to look inside the car, nodded once, then retreated.
“Well, there’s a Chatty Kathy,” Freedman rumbled.
“He was ATF for a dozen years,” Berg said. “And as you know those guys are a little short on conversational skills. I’ll do my best to keep him from shooting you by accident.”
“That would be good.” McLaren’s eyes followed the man as he hulked around the car suspiciously, probably looking for bombs or biological weapons or contraband cigarettes. “Man, he looks grim.”
“That’s why we put him up front,” Berg said. “Makes our clients feel real secure. The guy’s a puff ball, though. Raise
s cocker spaniel puppies.”
“He probably eats them.”
Berg laughed and rolled his hand at someone in the guard booth by the gate, and two hundred square feet of cyclone fence unlatched and started to hum open. “Red’s on board, waiting for you. Some doin’s tonight, huh?”
“Might be,” Freedman agreed. “This the only access?”
“For cars, yeah. We check everybody against the guest list here, and sweep them before they get through.” He raised a handheld metal detector.
“Mayor’s going to love that,” McLaren said.
“Him, I’m doing personally. Always thought he was a shifty bastard. Good to see you again, Freedman.”
“You, too, Anton.”
McLaren waited until they’d pulled through the gate into the parking lot before whispering, “Anton?”
“Don’t go there,” Freedman told him.
The Nicollet rested at dockside, about ten times larger than anything McLaren had expected, three stacked decks gleaming white against dark gray clouds that were starting to shred in the middle. They’d be gone by dark, the weatherman had said, and clear skies would send the temperatures plummeting. Hell of a night to be on a riverboat.
“Bitchin’ cold already,” Freedman grumbled, picking up the pace. “There’s Red. You ever met him?”
“Nope.” McLaren looked at the man striding toward them across the parking lot. He’d expected a bulky, Minnesota homegrown kind of guy, but Chilton looked more like Clark Gable in his prime, right down to the little dark mustache and the million-dollar smile.
“Lookin’ good, Red.” Freedman gave him back a smile and pumped his hand. “Johnny McLaren, meet the fool who sold out the noble profession of public service for a measly few hundred grand a year.”
“It’s always an honor to meet a man with real brains,” Johnny said warmly as he shook his hand. “Especially when they saddle me with a guy like Freedman.”
Red gave a hearty laugh. “Pleasure to meet you, Johnny McLaren. You got a taste of gate security coming in, right?”
“Looks tight,” Freedman said.