by P. J. Tracy
Magozzi asked, “Who’re you talking to?”
“Becker. He picked up the surveillance on MacBride from Garfield. Now she’s at the Monkeewrench offices, and apparently so are the rest of them. All the tails are parked out front, looks like a goddamned police convention.… Yeah, Becker, I’m still here.” He listened for a minute, rolling his eyes. “Okay, okay, you stay put, and one other car. Send the rest back to the house.… Christ, Becker, I don’t care, just pick one.” He snapped the phone closed. “Man, that was one rocket scientist. Who the hell is Becker anyway?”
“Don’t know him.”
“He sounds like he’s about twelve. He checked with the Monkeewrench people. They’re all staying put except Cross; he’s leaving before noon; so I left one car to cover him, and Becker at the warehouse.”
“Okay. We’re going to need some help from outside with these lists. Think you could get someone to cut the coffee ladies loose to come up here and read?”
Gino brightened immediately. “I bet they’d bring their own coffee.”
“I bet they would.”
Bonar made a face into the cup he’d filled from the grimy homicide pot. “Sure hope they didn’t make this stuff.”
“Oh, Bonar.” Gino gave him a benevolent smile. “Come, my son. I’m going to lead you to heaven. Contrary to popular opinion, that happens to be downstairs …”
Sharon was thumbing through the stack of paper on the table. “So you think you’ll have enough help with the list?” she asked Magozzi.
“You have someplace you need to be?”
“Well, I was thinking … you’re covering the Monkeewrench crew, right?”
“Yeah. Have been since last night.”
“Is this protective surveillance, or suspect surveillance?”
“Yes.”
“Any chance I could get in there and get a look at these people? Maybe talk to them a bit, scope them out …”
Magozzi raised a brow. “You think you can spot a hermaphrodite?”
Sharon shook her head impatiently. “Of course not. But I’m not bad at spotting psychopaths. Interviewed a couple hundred of them for that FBI paper.”
Magozzi glanced over her head at Sheriff Halloran, who was trying his best not to look alarmed. “Your deputy, your call, Sheriff.”
Halloran’s jaw tightened and his brows worked. He looked at Magozzi, not Sharon. “I lost one deputy this week. I’m not too keen on putting another one in harm’s way if I don’t have to.”
“I’ll be in and out,” Sharon said. “And you’ve got other officers on site, right?”
Magozzi nodded. “Right outside the building.”
“Which won’t do you a damn bit of good if you’re locked inside with a killer,” Halloran said.
She closed her eyes and sighed. “First of all, I’m not exactly defenseless, and second of all, you heard Gino say they’re all there. All five of them. Even if one of them is the shooter, he or she is not likely to start gunning down cops in front of the rest of them. Especially with more cops right outside.”
Halloran’s expression was dark, but his eyes were steady. “There’s no reason for you to go there.”
“Really. I thought looking for the bad guy was why you brought us here.”
“I didn’t bring you here,” Halloran reminded her.
Sharon looked up at him, eyes flashing, jaw jutting. “Yeah, well, I certainly hope that wasn’t because you were trying to protect me or something stupid like that, because I’m not going to do the citizens of Kingsford County a hell of a lot of good as a deputy if my commanding officer won’t let me out on the street for fear I’ll stub my toe.”
“We’ll get him with the list!” Halloran snapped, his face reddening.
The rising voices had attracted McLaren’s attention. He was leaning forward at his desk in the back, a half-smile on his face, phone pressed to his chest so the tedious business of some homicide call didn’t interfere with his enjoyment of the fireworks in his own front yard. He waggled red brows at Maggozi.
Gloria seemed to be having a good time, too. She was rocking back on her platform heels, beaming at Sharon like a well-loved child, and even though she would never have said, “You go, girl” out loud, because that was what people expected a black woman to say, the expression was written all over her face.
Magozzi, on the other hand, was decidedly uncomfortable. Cop-cop confrontations were not good; man-woman confrontations were flat-out terrifying, and this one was both. He decided to take charge of the situation and end this right now. “Okay, listen, you two …”
Sharon spun her head and looked at him.
Or maybe he should just let them work this out for themselves.
“Listen, Mike.” Sharon turned her attention back to Halloran. “Even if we get a name off those lists, that doesn’t mean we’ve got the shooter. He could have changed his name a dozen times since then, and it could take days to trace from then to now, especially if it’s one of the Monkeewrench owners. We are light-years behind those people when it comes to altering computer records. But if I could spend just a little time with them, ask the right questions, maybe I could see something in one of them, or jog loose a memory about somebody they knew in Georgia.”
Sheriff Halloran was trying to scowl at her, but Magozzi thought he just looked helpless. Poor guy. Apparently Sharon took pity on him, too, because her voice softened.
“It’s what I do, Mike. And I’m good at it. You know I am.”
Halloran was remembering what he’d told Danny Peltier on the way out to the Kleinfeldts’: that Sharon was the best interrogator he had. There seemed to be a strange sort of synchronicity at work here; things coming together in a way that was tying his stomach into knots.
Suddenly there was the startling sound of complete silence, and Magozzi realized the fax machine had stopped. “Tell me it didn’t die,” he begged Gloria.
She pulled out the stack of papers in the tray and looked at the number on the last one. “Nope. This is the whole lollapalooza.” She added the papers to a stack on the table just as Gino and Bonar entered the office carrying coffee-making paraphernalia. A line of women trailed behind, looking around with eyes as wide as those of the grade-schoolers who tramped through on occasional field trips.
“Well, Mike?” Sharon asked quickly, wanting this settled before the confusion of new arrivals gave him an excuse to postpone his decision.
“I’ll go with you.”
She shook her head firmly. “It doesn’t work that way. I’m not going to get any information out of anybody with you hovering. You’re too intimidating.”
“I’m too intimidating?”
“I’ll wear a vest. I’ll take a shoulder unit and leave it on. You can listen to every word.”
Halloran looked down and saw Sharon the cop, in the shapeless brown uniform with the cuffs and the Mace and the big gun she could shoot faster and better than anyone on the force. But in his mind’s eye he saw Sharon in the red dress, looking small and hopeful with colored water on her lips. “I’m going with you,” he said, and when she opened her mouth to protest again, he added, “But I’ll wait outside.”
After Sharon and Halloran left for the Monkeewrench warehouse, Magozzi looked around at his new workforce and immediately regretted letting them go. Gino and Bonar had brought fifteen women up from data entry downstairs, and now they were clustered together in a whispering, tittering pack, uncertain and nervous in this strange environment.
Their demeanor changed when Gino started to explain what they needed done, and even before he finished the women were dragging chairs around the table near the fax, dividing the pages of the registration list, organizing themselves like an army of ants with a single purpose.
Gino, always smart enough to know when he’d become superfluous, stepped over to talk to Magozzi. “This is going to work.”
“Looks like it.” Magozzi watched one of the women fussing over Bonar, putting him in a chair, handing him a sheaf
of pages, setting a mug of steaming coffee at his right hand. Bonar took a sip, feigned an ecstatic swoon, and got a pat on his head for his trouble.
“I stopped and talked to Tommy. He’s running a couple of searches through the FBI file, looking for the geeks’ real names so maybe we could check them through the list first. He found MacBride right off the bat, since she was the focus. No way we can figure the rest of them. There’s a ton of witness and friend interviews, but no physical characteristics, just names.”
Magozzi slid his eyes sideways to look at him, tried not to ask, but finally he couldn’t stand it. “All right, damn it, what’s her real name?”
Gino handed him a small folded piece of paper.
Magozzi opened it, looked at it, and frowned. “No way.”
“I kid you not. Jane Doe. Tommy checked it all the way back to her birth certificate. That’s her real name, all right. Just about the saddest thing I ever heard.”
Magozzi took a deep breath, then shook his head and handed the paper back to Gino. “Have them check it through first. I’ve got to call Monkeewrench and tell them Sharon’s on her way.”
Gino nodded. “Call Dispatch while you’re at it so they can give Becker a heads-up, or he’ll probably shoot her before she gets to the door.”
Chapter 43
Roadrunner was at his desk in the loft, eating a Twinkie, of all things, and there was no clearer indication that he was having a bad day. Not only had he overslept for the first time in fifteen years, but when he had finally regained consciousness, it had been with a splitting headache and a stomach so sour he couldn’t even contemplate coffee. He blamed the champagne and swore off the stuff for the rest of his life.
Even Annie, usually the last to arrive at the office, had beaten him in that morning. Now she was swishing over in a brown satin ensemble that was covered from top to bottom with tiers of velvet, leaf-shaped cutouts in autumn colors. She was carrying a mug of coffee and a white bakery bag. She set the coffee down in front of him. “Here you go, Sleeping Beauty.” She eyed his yellow sponge breakfast suspiciously. “I thought you said Hostess was the devil’s workshop.”
Roadrunner looked guiltily at the Twinkie and set it down. “They are, but I was hungry. The Food and Fuel is a little weak on the food part and I didn’t have time for anything else.” He eyed her outfit. “You look like a tree.”
“Honesty will never get you a date, pal.” She dug in the bag and slapped a cherry turnover down on his desk. “If you’re going to poison yourself with sugar and fat, at least do it without the preservatives. The Russians used Twinkies to preserve Lenin—did you know that?”
Roadrunner gave her a crooked smile and took the turnover. “Thanks, Annie. You look like a pretty tree.”
“Uh-uh. Too little, too late.”
“Where is everybody?”
“Harley walked down to Liquor World to get a little hair of the dog. Grace went with him.”
“How is she?”
Annie clicked her tongue against her teeth. “Okay, I guess, considering. But she doesn’t want to leave.”
Roadrunner looked alarmed. “But we have to leave. We all agreed.”
“We all agreed. Grace agreed to meet, to talk about it, that’s all. She’s not going to go, Roadrunner. She’s not going to run this time.”
“Oh, man, Annie, he was in her backyard. There isn’t any doubt now, is there? This is the guy—he’s back. And he’s close. Jesus, she can’t stay here.”
“Settle down. I talked to Mitch, he’s on his way over. When we’re all together, we’ll find a way to talk her into it.”
The elevator rumbled up a few minutes later and Mitch emerged, looking wild-eyed and worse than anyone had ever seen him.
“Good Lord, Mitchell, what is the matter?” Annie asked.
He gaped at her. “Are you kidding? You mean aside from the fact that there’s a killer stalking Grace, the company is going bankrupt, and we have to disappear and start all over again?”
“Yeah. Aside from that.”
Mitch collapsed into a chair and dragged his hands down his face. “Christ. I told Diane we were thinking about leaving and she just freaked. You know what this means, don’t you? She’d have to stop painting. She’s at the top of her career, she has stuff hanging all over the world, and now she’s going to have to drop off the face of the earth and give it all up.”
They were all silent for a moment. It was Roadrunner who finally spoke. “You know, Mitch … you don’t have to go. You’re married. You have obligations the rest of us don’t. Your family’s got to come first.”
Mitch looked aghast. “This is my family. This has always been my family. If Grace goes, if the rest of you go, I go.” He pressed his palms into his eye sockets. “Shit, this is such a fucking mess I can’t believe it. I’m not even supposed to be here. I promised Diane I wouldn’t come here today. I gave her my fucking word. And the minute she left for the gallery, I snuck out like some guilty, FUCKING KID.”
“Jesus, Mitch,” Roadrunner said. “Take it easy. You’re going to have a heart attack.”
“I should be so lucky. Anyway, I can’t stick around for long. I’ve got to get back home before Diane does. Where the hell are Grace and Harley?”
The elevator started down, answering a call from below. “That’s them,” Annie said. “And before they get up here, you should know that Grace said she doesn’t want to go.”
They’d had a meeting like this once before, Grace remembered. Only that time the others had all been standing around her hospital bed in the psych ward at Atlanta General. She’d been young, scared out of her mind, half in the bag from whatever tranquilizers they had dripping into her arm, and images of Libbie Herold bleeding to death on the other side of that closet door had still been playing on the inside of her head. In that state, she probably would have gone to the bunker with Hitler if he’d told her to.
But not this time. This time she was just too goddamned tired. She wanted it over, one way or the other.
“Damn it, Grace, it’s different this time!” Harley was pacing around their circle of chairs, smacking a beefy fist into his palm, making the dragons on his arms twitch and ripple. “He’s totally focused on you. He was in your backyard, for chrissake! This time you are the target, can’t you see that?”
“That’s why I don’t have to run this time, Harley. This time it’s my risk, and only mine.”
“Grace.” Roadrunner leaned forward in his chair and grabbed her hands with long, bony fingers. “We could just go for a little while, until they catch him, then we could come back. It wouldn’t have to be forever.”
Grace squeezed his fingers and smiled. “If I disappear, he disappears, just like last time. And then maybe I’ll have another ten years of looking over my shoulder before he finds me again, and then it will start all over. The cops are getting close. Let’s give it another day or two.”
“The cops are hopeless!” Roadrunner said. “They were all over the Megamall and look what happened! And how about the paddleboat? You should have seen the men they had down there, and they didn’t do a damn bit of good!”
Harley stopped pacing and looked at Roadrunner. “Are you telling us you were down at the paddleboat landing when that guy was killed?”
Roadrunner gave him an irritable look. “Obviously not, or I would have seen the killer. By the time I got there the cops and the security people were already there.”
“You stupid shit, are you crazy? Do you realize what they would have thought if they’d seen you there?”
“I just wanted to make sure they had it covered, that’s all! I didn’t want anyone else to die!” Roadrunner shouted, and for a minute it looked like he was going to burst into tears.
Grace patted his hand and smiled at him.
By the time Magozzi called to tell Grace Deputy Sharon Mueller was on her way, Mitch was in his office gathering paperwork to take home, Annie was across the street picking up takeout from an Italian deli, and the rest
of them were hard at work on the only thing that remained for them to do—tracing the e-mails.
There was a hissing sound as Harley opened his second beer. “We’re going to get this son of a bitch,” he muttered at his monitor.
Chapter 44
Halloran sat in the driver’s seat of the cruiser, listening to the crackle of static from his shoulder unit, feeling like a coiled spring about to shoot through the windshield.
The minute the warehouse door had closed behind Sharon, the radios had stopped working, and he’d panicked. He’d jumped out of the car and run across the street to the MPD unit parked there, scaring the hell out of a blond kid behind the wheel who looked about ten years too young to be wearing a uniform.
“Oh yeah,” Becker said after Halloran’s hurried explanation. “We have a lot of trouble with reception in some of these old buildings. Some kind of metal they used to reinforce the concrete plays hell with the radios. Should clear up when she gets upstairs where there are some windows.”
So now he was waiting, counting seconds in his head like a kid trying to figure out how far away lightning was. She’d do a walk-through of the big downstairs garage before going upstairs; that was a given; but goddamn it how long would that take? She’d already been in there three minutes and forty-four seconds.
Sharon had locked the shoulder radio transmit key in the “on” position before she left the car, and on her way to the intercom box next to the big warehouse door, she’d heard Halloran say, “I can hear you breathing.”
Something like a mild electrical shock—startling, but most certainly not unpleasant—had run through her body when he’d said that. She smiled now, remembering the feeling.
She’d heard the radio start to clutter up the minute the door closed behind her, and figured she had about five minutes to check the garage and get upstairs before Halloran started shooting his way in.
For two long years she’d felt nothing coming off him except the indifferent waves of a man who worked hard to keep whatever he was really feeling under tight control. But in the last few days she’d poked a big hole in that indifference and let the caveman out. Never mind that she could outdraw, outshoot, and probably outfight the guy, for all the difference in their sizes. Halloran felt a primitive compulsion to protect her, and Sharon felt a primitive compulsion to let him. That, she figured, was the way it was supposed to be.