Shoot to Thrill (4 page)

‘Same with you, Doc,’ Gino said. ‘You still playing hoops?’

‘Hoops?’

‘Basketball.’

‘Ah, yes, of course, basketball. I find I am enjoying the sport a great deal, especially now that my boys are old enough to join me. Perhaps I might have a second career after all.’ His mouth didn’t smile, but his dark eyes certainly did.

‘Well, you just let us know if you ever want to pick up a game with our department squad – we could use the height.’

‘That is a kind offer, and I thank you. And I am hoping that both of you and your loved ones are quite well?’

And so it went for a few minutes – the small talk before attending to the unpleasant business at hand was a ritual Magozzi figured all doctors learned their first year of med school.
Hello, Mr. Jones. How are you today? How’s the family? You’re looking good, have you been working out? Remember those tests we ran last week? Well, they didn’t turn out so well.

Finally, Dr. Rambachan stood on one leg while he removed a shoe and pulled on a rubber wading boot. Gino watched in amazement as he repeated the process with the second boot. ‘Jeez, Doc, how the hell did you do that? You looked like a flamingo standing there, didn’t even wobble. I gotta sit down to put on my socks or I keel over like a bowling pin.’

‘Balance in all things,’ Anant smiled, then turned sad eyes to the body in the water. ‘So this is our lady friend. I can

Gino made a face. ‘No reason to start messing with a possible crime scene when the victim is obviously dead.’

‘But we must always confirm the obvious.’ He went into the water without creating a ripple, then bent to his task. After a moment his hands went still in the water. ‘Ah. Here we have a little surprise.’

When Magozzi and Gino finally walked up from the river to the staging area, the sergeant who’d been running the canvass was back on site, leaning against his car and draining a can of Red Bull. Dark stains made Rorschach patterns on his uniform shirt, and his face was a particularly vivid shade of ripe tomato.

‘Hot one today, Detectives,’ he said, giving them the customary weather-related Minnesota greeting as he raised his can in their direction. If it had been winter, the greeting would have been, ‘Cold one today, Detectives.’

‘Are you gonna be okay?’ Gino asked, mopping at his own brow. ‘You look like you’re already in full meltdown.’

The sergeant grunted. ‘I grew up on the Iron Range. If the temp rises above sixty, I go into full meltdown. So what’s the news on that poor gal? I’m telling you, never in my life have I seen such a sad and sorry sight.’

‘Well, we got a newsflash for you – our bride down there? She’s sporting a package.’

‘What kind of package?’

The sergeant’s brows jumped up his forehead. ‘No way.’

‘Yes, way.’

The sarge thought about that for a minute while he chucked his empty can into the car. ‘I guess there’s no surprise there, come to think of it. We get all kinds down here after hours, especially the creative dressers – the Tiara’s just a few blocks up, you know, and they’ve got that big drag show that runs every night.’

Magozzi nodded. ‘We know.’

‘Any idea whether it’s a homicide or an accident?’

‘No real signs of foul play that the ME could see. And Crime Scene didn’t have a whole lot of luck with trace. If there is any, most of it’s probably on the way to the Gulf of Mexico by now.’

‘Probably an accident.’

‘Probably. But we’re going to have to wait for the autopsy before we know for sure.’

‘Well, I can tell you from experience that there’s a lot of booze and a lot of drugs down here. I’m surprised we don’t get more tooted-up riffraff falling into the drink.’

‘How did the canvass go?’ Magozzi asked, trying to find a patch of shade in the one spot along the river that didn’t have much tree coverage.

‘All the respectable citizens we talked to didn’t see a damn thing. But then we stumbled across Wild Jim, drunk as a skunk, taking a nap under some bushes.’

‘Who’s Wild Jim?’

The sergeant gave them a wry smile. ‘Oh, you guys have

Magozzi got interested. ‘For what?’

‘Public drunkenness, disturbing the peace. Every now and then he brings one of his guns down by the river and fires off a clip and wakes the neighbors, but mostly he’s harmless; just a real pain in the butt. We’ve pulled his guns a half a dozen times, but he just gets clean and another judge gives them back. Some of those bastards really stick together. Anyhow, he was ranting about some “crazy faggot” raising hell down here last night, but who knows? He hasn’t been able to see straight since he got kicked off the bench, and I’m guessing his blood alcohol is around point-three right now.’

Magozzi and Gino shared a look. ‘You’re not talking about Judge Bukowski.’

‘Oh, yeah, the very same.’

If you were in law enforcement, you knew who Judge James Bukowski was, even if you didn’t know him as Wild Jim. He’d always been a little left of the dial, but after six DUIs and a narc charge, he’d decided to take his Wild West show elsewhere three years ago; obviously down by the river. ‘Does he live around here?’

‘Sure. In one of those seven-figure lofts by the Mill City Museum. But he likes camping better, I guess.’

‘I’ll be damned,’ Gino said, shaking his head.

‘Like I told you, we get all kinds down here. We’ve got him in the tank if you want to talk to him later.’

It had been a year since someone had tried to kill Grace MacBride. In the span of her thirty-some years, this was quite an impressive hiatus, but it hadn’t been long enough. She still carried the Sig and the derringer every time she left her house; she still wore the knee-high riding boots that would make it difficult for someone to slash the arteries in her legs; and she was still constantly, painfully aware of every detail of her surroundings. Every time she abandoned one of these defenses in a pathetic shot at normalcy, something bad happened. This particular pair of boots was getting worn; a little soft at the ankle, a little run down at the heel. She would have to replace them soon.

Get over it, Grace.
She said that to herself every morning when she woke up, because, truthfully, she was living such a wonderfully ordinary life now. Get up, dress, feed the dog, eat breakfast, go to work. This was the routine of hundreds of thousands who lived in this city, and even if some of them were carrying, she’d never seen one other in a pair of riding boots they were afraid to take off.

‘I’m pathetic, Charlie, you know that?’

The dog at her side wagged his whole body at the sound of her voice. Apparently the stub that was left of his tail wasn’t expressive enough.

Whatever had taken Charlie’s tail and his courage had

In the mornings, they went out the front door, over to the garage, into the Range Rover, then off to the Monkee-wrench offices on the third floor of Harley Davidson’s Summit Avenue mansion, the dog’s favorite place in the world.

It was only the third week in June, barely the first kiss of summer in an average year, and already Minnesota had racked up a record number of blistering dry days that had lowered the rivers and left burgeoning crops wilting in dusty fields. Every farmer in the state knew that the cycle of drought and flood was a problematic yet normal course of events that those who lived off the land had learned to expect over the centuries; but the media lived in the cities, and such extremes spelled ratings, turning every anchor desk into a doomsayer machine. Suburbanites were quick to jump on the bandwagon when watering restrictions turned their Kentucky bluegrass brown, and no-wake zones on the lakes and rivers kept them from the thrill of high-throttle boating.

Normally there was no weather condition that kept

Charlie started whining in the backseat of Grace Mac-Bride’s Range Rover when she made the turn onto Summit Avenue.

‘Soon,’ she told him, going a little faster than the speed limit, the Gothic turrets of Harley Davidson’s red stone manse already visible, two blocks away. By the time she pulled through the gate and under the portico, the black Town Car had already deposited the precious cargo of Annie Belinsky at the enormous wooden doors.

Annie always traveled by Town Car, particularly in the summer, when the drivers tended to be muscular, tanned college boys. She could have seduced them all, but didn’t. She just liked to look at them.

This morning Annie was an overly voluptuous Fitzgerald heroine in ankle-length linen and lace. A wide-brimmed sunhat, balanced on her dark bob, and T-strap pumps clicked nicely on the slate walk.

If anyone had ever doubted that Charlie was a brilliant dog, all they had to do was watch the great restraint he always exercised when greeting Annie. His emotions wiggled all over him as he went within two inches of her and then stopped,

Grace smiled at her. ‘Very Gatsby. I like it.’

‘You know me, Fat Annie was just born for croquet and champagne, although you’re not about to get me out on a lawn in this heat. Come on, let’s get ourselves inside before I start to render.’

Annie had always thought Gothic to be a particularly uncivilized and slightly distasteful architecture, which therefore suited Harley perfectly. The baroque furnishings he favored were as massive as his frame and his personality, but as far as she was concerned, they were just plain Frankenstein.

They found Harley at the eight-burner stove in the kitchen, dumping canned chili in a pot with one hand, holding a beer with the other. Charlie was already next to him, nose up to a skillet of warming breakfast sausage. ‘Just for you, buddy.’ He tossed a link into the air and Charlie rose on his hind legs to catch it.

Grace leaned an elbow on a counter, chin in her hand, and watched the pair of them. The really amazing thing about this vagabond dog was what he taught you about the people he interacted with. Harley, for instance, oblivious to his own great value, bought affection shamelessly. Charlie was the easiest mark. One sausage, and he was yours for life. ‘Where’s Roadrunner?’ she asked.

‘In the shower. He made a new land speed record biking over here this morning, and I had to wring him out before I’d let him in the house.’

‘Technically, since I didn’t sleep last night, it isn’t really morning. It’s just a continuation of the dark time, only with light.’

Grace smiled at him. ‘You’re really shook up about this, aren’t you?’

‘You’re goddamned right I’m shook up about it. We’re going to have a Fed in this house for God knows how long, watching over our shoulders, looking at every move we make.’

‘So?’

‘So?
So?
Are you kidding me? We break about a hundred Federal laws every day when we work. We bust into secured sites – hell, we hack into the FBI like it was our own e-mail. They’re going to wait until they get the software program they want from us, then they’re going to throw us in the pen for about four hundred years. Christ. We beat these guys black and blue for ten years. They hate our guts, so what do they do? They ask permission to send this Trojan horse asshole right into our office and we open the door.’

‘Are you talking about John Smith?’ Roadrunner ducked through one of the kitchen doorways in his perpetual uniform of bicyclist Lycra. Even though the entire house was built on a grand scale, at six-foot-seven his head nearly brushed the lintel. ‘Hi, Grace, Annie. Sounds like you’re getting the four-hundred-years-in-prison lecture.’

Harley scowled at him. ‘Very funny, dipshit. And that damn well better not be the same suit you were wearing when you

‘I’m not an animal. I put the sweaty one under your bed. And all your koi are dead, anyhow.’

Annie’s bow lips turned down in a troubled pout as she focused on the disturbing possibility of wearing a prison-orange jumpsuit for any length of time. ‘They wouldn’t do that, would they, Grace?’

‘Do what?’

‘Throw us in jail for a teeny-weeny bit of computer mischief.’

‘No, of course not. Harley’s just being paranoid. The Feds know all about us working under the table every now and then …’

‘Right,’ Harley grumbled. ‘They just haven’t been able to prove it.’

Grace rolled her eyes. ‘They asked for our help, and they’re going to cut us some slack. Besides, Smith is the new FBI, not the Hoover archetypes we were dealing with back in Atlanta.’

‘Are you kidding me? Did we meet the same guy? He had the suit, he looked like a Feeb, he talked that stupid Feeb talk, shit. The only thing that wasn’t Hoover archetype about Smith was that he wasn’t wearing a dress.’

Grace shook her head. ‘They’re desperate, Harley. They tried tracing this network and they can’t do it. Not legally, anyway. So they bring in us and a bunch of hackers so we can do what the law keeps the Feds from doing themselves. You can’t stick religiously to every letter of the law when lives are at stake, and maybe they’re starting to get that. Sometimes

Harley nodded. ‘Exactly my point. Who ever said the Feds were human beings?’

Grace shrugged. ‘We had a choice. An office of our own in D.C., or D.C. came to us.’

‘Yeah, well, I agreed to that before they told us they were sending a full-time spy.’

‘Liaison,’ Grace corrected him. ‘He’s here to help us.’

Harley snorted. ‘That’s what they say to the mental patients when the guy comes in to give them electric-shock therapy. Christ, Grace, you’re talking about the same agency that set you up to bait a serial killer, and now all of a sudden you think they’ve got scruples?’

‘Harley.’ Grace took in a breath and exhaled noisily; one of those secret signals that told people who knew her they should pay attention. ‘There are creeps out there filming fake murders to get their fifteen minutes on the Web; but there are other creeps filming real murders for the same kind of celebrity. The FBI wants them all shut down, and the first warrant step is a software program that can tell the difference between something staged and something real. They’re doing the right thing, Harley, trying to nail the real killers fast, and scaring the creep idiots straight. And it’s simple for us. Software 101.’

Harley snorted. ‘I’m glad you’re so optimistic. Even if we use one of our existing software platforms, we’re talking a week, minimum, just to get an idea if this is doable. It’s going to be a ton of extra work, and my point is, we’ve got