by P. J. Tracy
Magozzi smiled as the chief just stood there in total, stone-faced silence, his eyes calmly tracking his audience while he waited for them to shut up. And remarkably, they eventually did. It was like he had hypnotized them. Or at the very least, shamed them into silence.
“God, he’s good,” McLaren said. “Cool as a cucumber. Malcherson’s the only guy alive who can get Amanda White to clamp her big mouth.”
“It’s the suit,” Gino said. “And that’s a new one. Nice choice, too. Serious, authoritative, and the tie really takes it over the top.”
On-screen, Malcherson cleared his throat. “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. I will be making a very brief statement, and I won’t be taking any questions afterward.
“As you know, a young woman—a wife and mother of two—was found dead this morning in Minnehaha Dog Park. It is far too early in the investigation to comment on this tragedy, and the victim’s name will not be released at this time, however, I can tell you that this is a homicide investigation. All of our detectives are working around the clock to bring swift justice to the perpetrator, but until then, I implore every single citizen to remain vigilant, and take their personal safety seriously. . . .”
The outburst from the reporters was instantaneous and seemed endless, at least to Magozzi. “What kind of cautionary measures should people be taking?” “Do you have a suspect?” “Are you saying our parks might not be safe?” Et cetera, et cetera. And then the real kicker, from none other than Amanda White: “A young woman was similarly murdered in Powderhorn Park last year. Is there a serial killer operating in the Minneapolis parks?”
Gino pressed a palm to his forehead. “Is this blowing up in our faces?”
“He’s gonna be fine,” McLaren said, his eyes fixed on the TV screen. “Guy’s a rock star. Look at him. Body language is calm, assured . . .”
Chief Malcherson looked at Amanda White like he would look at a dead cockroach in his soup bowl. “We cannot confirm with any degree of certainty that the two murders are connected. What we do know for certain is that there was a murder in that dog park last night, so for the time being, it would be wise to exercise caution and use common sense. If you run, or enjoy other outdoor activities, do it with a friend. Especially if you’re a woman. Park patrol presence will be enhanced, but that is no substitute for a vigilant public. If you see something or someone suspicious, report it. We have tip lines in place, both by phone and on our website. Now, we all have our jobs to do, and Minneapolis Homicide will be forthright with any new information. Thank you, and good night.”
The questions continued long after Malcherson had reentered City Hall.
SIXTEEN
There was something wrong this summer. Everybody in Minnesota knew it, because there were no mosquitoes. Sure, they were in the middle of a drought, but droughts, like deluges, were as regular as clockwork and had been for as long as they’d been keeping records. But there had always been mosquitoes. This was different, and Magozzi shared this observation with Grace, who was sitting in the Adirondack chair next to him, gazing up at the lush green magnolia tree in her backyard.
She looked at him with a bemused expression. Her dark hair was pulled back in a short ponytail against the heat and her cheeks were faintly pink, which made the blue of her eyes seem even more intense, even in the waning daylight. “Mosquitoes breed in water. No water, no mosquitoes.”
“Minnesota has more water than land, even during a drought. There’s something else going on. I think it’s a portent.”
“Of what?”
“I don’t know, but I was a kid in ’87, during the last drought like this, and I’m telling you, the mosquitoes bred like drunken frat boys. Did you get some sun today?”
“A little. Harley dragged us all out to a country farm today.”
“You’re kidding. Harley’s been trying to get you on bed rest since you were three months pregnant and then he drags you out to a farm in the heat and sun?”
“I think I’ve finally been able to convince him that I’m pregnant, not terminally ill.”
“That’s progress. He’s not talking about that ostrich thing again, is he?”
Grace shook her head. “There’s a farmer in southwestern Minnesota whose daughter disappeared. He and the local sheriff asked for our help.”
“Runaway?”
“Definitely not. She’s mid-thirties, a devoted daughter, has a career she loves, and by all accounts so far, she’s purer than Mother Teresa.”
“How long has she been missing?”
“Two months.”
Magozzi thought about the grim statistics on missing persons gone for even a few days. Happy endings were few and far between, and all too often, families lived in a hellish limbo for months or years, constantly searching for answers and closure they might never get. “So you’re taking it on.”
“It’s worth our time. And it’s interesting. There was blood on the road where they found her abandoned car. The good news is, the blood wasn’t the daughter’s. The kicker is that it rang bells on CODIS. It matched a felon with multiple drug convictions and ties to the Mexican cartels. They haven’t been able to track him down, but maybe we can.”
Magozzi’s eyebrows peaked and his mouth turned down all at the same time. “A beloved farmer’s daughter disappears into thin air, and a pool of blood next to her abandoned car belongs to a drug dealer? That is interesting. Any chance she was leading a double life?”
“Extremely doubtful. The most scandalous thing on her computer was a recipe for apple crisp with brandied whipped cream. But we won’t know until we can input everything into our computers. There’s a huge amount of paperwork on the case, a lot of information that needs to be streamlined, collated, and cross-referenced, and that’s exactly what we designed our software to do. Harley and Roadrunner are packing up the Chariot tonight. We leave tomorrow.”
Magozzi loved the Chariot. It was Harley’s moniker for his over-the-top RV that served as Monkeewrench’s mobile workstation. It was outfitted with almost as much computing power as their home office, complete with a satellite uplink so they could literally work from anywhere without sacrificing technology. But it wasn’t your average mobile computing lab—the interior was about as opulent as a room in Versailles. “You’re going to work on-site?”
“Faster and easier than a two-hour commute each way. If we need to access any additional evidence or files, it will be right there. I can’t imagine we’ll be gone for more than a couple days.”
“If you’re taking on something new, I suppose it’s not a good time to ask for a favor.”
Grace turned to look at him. “I saw Malcherson’s press conference. The woman in the park—that’s your case?”
“It’s going to be everybody’s case if we get another one.”
“What makes you think there’s going to be another one?”
“This wasn’t his first. A woman was killed in Powderhorn Park last year. Same MO, down to every detail.”
“That’s right. A reporter brought that up.”
“Amanda White,” Magozzi grumbled. “But what she doesn’t know is that our most recent murder may have been his fourth.”
Grace looked down—at her growing belly, at the ground, at Charlie snoozing on the Adirondack chair next to her, Magozzi didn’t know. What he did know was that she was remembering a not-so-distant time in her past when she’d been pursued by a serial killer.
“You think it’s a serial?” she finally asked.
“He leaves calling cards, literally, and that detail never left Homicide. The woman in Powderhorn Park last year had an ace of spades tucked into her shirt.”
“The death card.”
“What?”
“Mobsters used to leave the ace of spades on their victims as a warning, back during Prohibition. Lore has it that in Vietnam, American soldiers left it on the dead bodie
s of Vietcong to psych out the enemy. Psychological warfare.”
Magozzi took a sip of his beer, which fell flat on his palate. “Our most recent victim had the four of spades tucked in her shirt. We’re wondering if there’s a two and a three out there somewhere.”
Grace reached over and touched his hand. She’d been doing that a lot more lately. “How can we help, Magozzi?”
SEVENTEEN
Katya Smirnova didn’t run to keep in shape; she ran to stay sane, as if she could escape the bull’s-eye she’d been carrying on her back for the first three decades of her life just by putting on a little more speed.
She’d been only three at the time of the Chernobyl disaster, and had no memories of the horrors that followed. Her family had been living near Minsk then, surely far enough away to be safe, but someone had forgotten to tell them not to drink the milk of the grazing animals that lived in the path of the fallout. She was one of four siblings, and the last one still alive.
As she finished her third loop around the lake, she was feeling the burn in her legs, and pushed herself harder, thinking of her favorite American movie, Marathon Man. She watched it twice a year, a month or two before her semiannual doctor exam, because in the movie, Dustin Hoffman’s running saved his life in the end. Maybe she’d be that lucky, even though she knew it was foolish to think she could outrun death—especially when the threat was lurking inside her, waiting for just the right time to explode.
Or maybe it would never explode. The uncertainty was the worst part, and in the very darkest recesses of her mind, she often wondered if she wouldn’t feel some twisted sense of relief to hear the prognosis she’d feared her entire life. At least then the fear would be gone.
Katya made one last loop around the lake just as the sun was setting, then veered off the paved path and onto the wooded terrain trail that was the shortcut to the parking lot. It was her favorite part of the run because the trail carved through elegant clusters of birch trees. It reminded her of playing in the famous birch forests of Russia, back when her parents and her brother and sisters were still alive.
She sensed the impact a split second before she felt it on her back, knocking the wind out of her and sending her down hard onto the ground. As she gasped to refill her lungs, she felt hands around her neck, felt herself being dragged into the underbrush, and she realized that all the uncertainty and fear of sickness she’d been living with was definitely not the worst thing in life.
An entirely new fear ignited Katya then, and she fought like hell in the little birch forest that represented a small piece of her homeland, praying to God she would make it to her doctor’s appointment tomorrow morning to hear any kind of news, good or bad.
EIGHTEEN
Magozzi and Gino were sitting in a booth at the back of Pig’s Eye Diner. They served the best breakfast in town, and every table was full, even though it was just shy of six in the morning and the sun was barely birthing onto the horizon.
Gino, a talented and seasoned stress eater, had made a substantial dent in his double huevos rancheros platter with chorizo and a side of ropa vieja, which took up half the table; Magozzi, a stress starver, was content to push around his single scrambled egg while he chugged down his fourth cup of coffee and ignored his side of toast.
“God, this is great,” Gino mumbled, finishing the first of his two chiles rellenos, then chasing it down with a mouthful of beans.
“What’s that brown stuff that looks like old rags?”
Gino gave him a surprised look. “That’s what it’s called. Well, technically ropa vieja means old clothes. It sounds better in Spanish.”
“Why the hell would you ever eat something with a name like that?”
“Because it’s fantastic. Help yourself.”
“No thanks.”
“You should be a little more adventurous with ethnic food, Leo.”
“Hey, I ate Indian food once or twice. I’m sticking with Italian.”
Gino returned his attention to his plate. “Feels almost normal, you and me grabbing some chow before work, as if we’re not going to be walking into a clusterfuck in about fifteen minutes.”
“Breakfast was a good call,” Magozzi humored him, even though food was the last thing on his mind.
Gino slugged down some orange juice. “So Monkeewrench is riding the Chariot down to the Iowa border for a missing persons case, huh?”
“Yep, but they’re working on our prison records as we speak. Helping catch a serial killer trumps everything. I told Grace about the cards, Gino. It’s one more piece of data they can put into the Beast.”
“Good. I hope it helps. We’ve got all the legwork done, all the feelers out there, but nothing came in overnight on the tip line or from the lab, and now we’re just dieseling, waiting for something to pop, and dammit, I hate that. Twenty-four hours into this and we’re stuck in neutral. Are we missing something?”
Magozzi crumpled his napkin and gave up on his plate. They were both frustrated by the slow forward plod and the waiting, but that was ninety-nine percent of the job. Reeling in a bad guy was the one percent that made it all worthwhile. “Maybe we should take a step back, think about the perp and who he might be.”
“He’s a seriously warped individual, is who he is. Like you said, we can’t get into the mind of a crazy.”
“Yeah, I know, but he’s also seriously ritualistic. The cutting with the same kind of knife, the cards, the strangulation, the archetype, no sexual assault—I could go on and on. This guy has a plan and he has a goal. It all means something, at least to him, and there has to be a clue somewhere in there we can figure out.”
“That’s all fine and dandy if we had somebody to look at, but we don’t. This guy works clean and stays in the shadows—no prints on the cards, no prints on the body, no murder weapon, and that little drop of blood on the thornbush I found isn’t a solid connection to the murder. It probably doesn’t even belong to him. And even if it did, how would we know? We’re missing pieces. Big pieces. We might as well blindfold ourselves, open up a phone book, and poke our fingers on a random name.”
Magozzi sighed and poured himself more coffee from the carafe on the table. “Do they print phone books anymore?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
As their waitress made a courtesy stop and Gino threw out a credit card, Magozzi felt his phone vibrate against his hip and looked down at the caller ID. “It’s McLaren. Hey, Johnny, what’s up?”
Magozzi’s frown grew deeper as he listened, then he pulled out his notebook and pen and wrote down a number and a name. “Thanks, Johnny. We’ll catch you later.”
“Who the hell is Lon Cather?” Gino asked, squinting at Magozzi’s notebook.
“Saint Paul Homicide. He wants a call back ASAP.”
Gino sagged back in his chair. “Do not tell me they have a body.”
“They do. Phalen Park. Cather called our homicide unit because he saw some similarities with our murders. He wasn’t giving it all up at first, but when Johnny told him he’d caught Megan Lynn last year and that he was working tandem with us on Charlotte Wells, he told McLaren about the card.”
“Shit. Angela and I just took the kids to that park last weekend.”
“Five of spades, Gino. You were right—he’s trying to finish the suit.”
NINETEEN
Saint Paul homicide detective Lon Cather was trying to stay cool in the shade of some birch trees while he watched shards of sun play tricks with light on the surface of Lake Phalen. Across the lake, on the public beach, kids were screaming, giggling, and thrashing around in the shallow water, looking like tropical fish in their bright suits.
He’d been that carefree kid once, spending most of his young summers on Phalen with his grandfather, swimming, fishing, and eating sandy peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on the beach. On calm, hot days just like this one, Grandpa would ta
ke him out in an aluminum boat to fish the deeper waters, and those were the only times he remembered him talking much, as if the water had the magical power to suddenly animate the stoic, mostly silent old man.
He told him tall tales about catching sunfish the size of his head and walleyes that weighed more than some dogs. He told him how Saint Paul had been founded by a French Canadian bootlegger named Pig’s Eye Parrant, which explained how screwed up the streets were. And sometimes, he told him stories about life on those screwed-up streets as a cop.
And once—only once—as they rowed back to shore under a rainbow sunset with a pail full of fat panfish—Grandpa had gone way back in time, telling him how his great-grandfather had been Saint Paul’s chief of police when Al Capone and his crew had been running rum along the Mississippi and setting up speakeasies in the caves along the river.
What’s a speakeasy, Grandpa?
Kind of like Grundy’s, where we go for hamburgers every Friday.
Oh. Okay. Who’s Al Capone?
He was a bad man who didn’t believe in following the law.
What’s it like to be a policeman?
His grandfather hadn’t really answered, he’d just gotten a faraway look and a little smile that curved up his mouth, making deep wrinkles around his eyes that looked like the furrows in Grandma’s garden when she was just starting to plant vegetable seeds. And since his grandfather didn’t smile all that much, Lon decided that being a policeman must be the greatest thing in the world.
With that single, defining memory of observing happiness in a mostly unhappy man, he’d entered the police academy after graduating from Hamline University with a criminal justice degree, and had never looked back. He’d had his detective’s shield for three years now—still green, but smarter than most by his estimation, with a solid caseload under his belt. And yet for all the things the job had thrown at him over the years, he’d never imagined returning to this peaceful place of childhood summers that had formed his future to observe and record the aftermath of a serial killer.