Want To Play (18 page)

Gino had finally extricated himself from the melee on the boat and was ducking beneath fluttering ribbons of crime-scene tape, heading toward him. He was overdressed for the twenty-degree weather in a puffy down parka, fur-lined cap, and fat snowmobile mittens that were good to seventy below. Two crime-scene techs followed him, carrying a gurney that held a black zippered bag.

‘You planning an Antarctic expedition later?’ Magozzi asked.

Gino glowered at him. ‘I’m sick of freezing my balls off. It’s only October, for crying out loud. Whatever happened to Indian summer? I swear to God I’m going to move south. I hate this friggin’ state. I hate winter. We’re going to have trick-or-treaters out in snowmobile suits next week and every time you open the front door you’re going to lose about a hundred dollars’ worth of heat –’

Magozzi interrupted a rant that could go on until spring. ‘So what have we got?’

Gino let out a tremendous sigh that filled the air around his face with billowy white clouds of frost. ‘Same ol’, same ol’. A nightmare from hell. What do you want first, gossip or facts?’

‘Definitely gossip. The truth hurts too much.’

‘Well, the mayor threw out his back bending over to kiss Hammond’s ass –
apologizing
, if you can friggin’ believe it, for causing such a ruckus. Stupid son of a bitch.’

‘Which one?’

Gino smiled unpleasantly. ‘Good question. At this point, I’d say they’re interchangeable. Anyhow, the mayor quickly recovered from said back injury in time to save face in front of his biggest campaign contributor by openly chastising McLaren and Freedman for, quote, “letting this terrible thing happen.” ’

‘You’re not kidding, are you?’

‘No, I’m not. Goddamn political asshole. Our guys were good, though. Just stood there and took it.’

‘Jesus Christ. Remind me to write them up some bonus time and hazard pay when we’re doing hours on this thing.’

‘I think a couple Purple Hearts would be more appropriate.’

Magozzi looked up and saw Red Chilton and two of his men disembarking from the boat. Even Red, normally unflappable, was looking a little worse for wear. Magozzi wouldn’t have traded places with the man for all the gold in Fort Knox. ‘How’s Red doing? I didn’t even see him when I was inside.’

‘Ah, you know Red. Master of détente. Personally I think he’s wasted in this field. He should be a diplomat.’

‘Any sense of who’s going to take the fall for this? I mean, when things shake out, people are going to wonder why thirty armed professionals on-site with a pre-warning couldn’t stop this thing.’

‘Well, that’s the good news. Anant says the vic was probably dead for hours, long before anyone showed up. Magnusson never mentioned his private head when he was giving the tour. Dinky little thing with one of those plastic accordion doors – everybody assumed it was just a closet. Of course, ignorance is no excuse – Argo and our guys both did sweeps before any of the guests were on board. But Red’s not passing the buck and neither are we. We’ll all just keep our fingers crossed and hope this gets lost in the shuffle, if you know what I mean.’

Magozzi nodded. ‘What else do you know?’

‘The only thing I know for sure is that Hammond’s lawyers are going to be up all night writing about fifty-two lawsuits. Wouldn’t surprise me if Hammond tries to sue the dead guy’s estate for emotional distress because he had the nerve to get killed. Of course, nothing holds water because Hammond was forewarned and he chose to ignore it.’

Magozzi smiled. ‘So Hammond’s going to be on the receiving end of some lawsuits.’

Gino winked. ‘Let’s just say he’s going to find out who his real friends are. If he has any. Hell,
I
might sue him for emotional distress – I was helping Helen with her history homework when I got the call. What if she fails her test tomorrow? She’ll be so damaged, her grades will start sliding, then she won’t get into college – we’re talking serious lost wages here. Anyhow, political intrigue and lawsuits aside, here’s the scoop, straight from the Grimm Reaper and your Hindu buddy. Same old shit – my words, not theirs –  .22 to the head. With one new wrinkle. Guy’s got a fresh bite mark on his hand. Very recent. Like minutes premortem.’

‘Terrific. Our boy’s getting creative.’

‘Yeah, that’s what I thought, so I get all excited, thinking maybe we get some DNA, a bite mark we can match, like that, and then Anant tells me he thinks the vic bit himself.’

‘What?’

‘Yeah. Guy’s got himself a serious overbite with some crooked canines. Match looks pretty good.’

‘You want to tell me why the vic would bite himself?’

‘Hey, it’s late, I’m tired, and I don’t want to go there. Rambachan will put it together. He always does.’

Magozzi looked over his partner’s shoulder and saw the medical examiner’s tall, lanky, unmistakable figure pacing the exterior deck of the ferry, his open coat flapping behind him, head bent in a search for clues Magozzi could only guess at. When he caught his eye, he waved him over. Rambachan lifted one finger and went back to pacing, and Magozzi returned his attention to Gino. ‘How are the interviews going?’

Gino snorted, scuffing at the frosty asphalt with his Sorels. ‘Slow. They scattered like panicked deer when they saw the squads.’ He looked irritably at the flashing turret lights. ‘Can we shut these damn things off?’ he bellowed to no one in particular. ‘It took half an hour just to get a head count. Over three hundred guests. And every single one of them hates me.’

‘That’s a record for you, isn’t it? Alienating three hundred people in one night?’

‘You know what I had to do to those people? I mean they’re all dressed to kill and ready to party and celebrating this really happy event, you know? And I have to go around with a friggin’ Polaroid of a dead guy with a hole in his head just in case he might be their date or their father or whatever. Now you want to take a stab at the statistics? How many out of all those people do you think are going to puke when they have to look at a picture of a bloody corpse at a wedding reception?’

‘Jesus, Gino . . .’

‘Thirteen. Thirteen puked right on the spot. Goddamn boat smells like the drunk tank on Sunday morning. And the ones that didn’t puke got hysterical. We should have been passing out Valium in little paper cups. “Here, take your pill and look at the dead guy.” Man. I even felt sorry for the bride, and she was the one I really wanted to deck this afternoon. But she’s just a kid, you know? Sure, a murder at your wedding reception sounds Agatha Christie when you’re that age, but looking at the body is a whole different story. Here she is all decked out in white satin and lace with little pearl things in her hair and me, Mr Nice Guy, I make her look at a corpse on her wedding night. Christ, my stomach’s a mess. I was scared shitless he belonged to one of them, you know?’

Magozzi nodded. ‘But he didn’t.’

‘No. Nobody ever saw him before. So basically we’ve got nothing. No defensive wounds, no shell, no trace far as we can tell without labs. Just a guy in a suit with no wallet, just like in the game.’

‘Which means more hurry up and wait for a print match or a Missing Persons before we can ID the victim.’

‘Or maybe the ground search will turn up his wallet in a Dumpster, who knows?’

Magozzi shoved his hands in his pockets, searching for gloves that were on his front closet shelf. ‘We need time of death to place the Monkeewrench people.’

‘Between two and four is what we’ve got at this point. And I called the geek squad while you were on your way over, right after you called and told me they popped up from nowhere ten years ago. Now tell me that isn’t weird.’

‘It’s weird.’

‘Anyway, they all answered except MacBride, and get this: they all left work early, they all went home alone and stayed there. Not an alibi in the bunch that holds water, unless MacBride comes up with one when we track her down.’

‘What did you tell them?’

‘Zip is what I told them. Just asked where they were between two and four, and told them we wanted them at the house for formal statements. Ten
A
.
M
. tomorrow. Didn’t mention this little circus, but if any of them have a TV, that’s a moot point.’ Gino tipped his head at him. ‘And you know what, buddy? Unless we rubber-hose them all and one of them breaks down and confesses, we’re screwed. So far this guy is hitting once a day, and the next murder in the game is at you-know-where.’

Magozzi closed his eyes at the reminder. The fourth murder in the game was set at the Mall of America, and the logistics of covering a place that big were a cop’s nightmare, not to mention the shit that would come down if Minnesota’s number-one tourist attraction became a homicide crime scene. ‘I don’t know. My gut still tells me no. It isn’t one of the Monkeewrench crew.’

Gino took off a mitten bigger than a small dog and started digging through the many pockets of his parka. ‘Why? Just because they called us? It wouldn’t be the first time the criminal reported the crime. Psychos get off on that shit, you know. Or maybe it’s one of them trying to bring down the rest. They all know the game, and now you tell me they’ve got this no-past thing going. You ask me, there’s just too much strange stuff going on with that bunch.’

Magozzi followed the pocket treasure hunt with his eyes. ‘Sounds like you want it to be one of them.’

‘Hell, yes, I do. It’s either one of them or some anonymous player on that registration list, and last time I checked in with Louise, they’d only cleared about a hundred out of five hundred and some. She said it’s practically impossible; every time they hit a red flag that tells them to look a little closer – a bogus address, billing addresses that don’t match up with residential addresses, like that – their hands are tied.
Our
hands are tied. None of the Internet providers are giving up any subscriber information without a subpoena, and right now the only probable cause we’ve got is a hunch that our guy might be on that list. He could kill half the city before we get the legal thumbs-up to do that kind of privacy violation.’

‘Almost makes me pine for the days of J. Edgar.’

‘Damn right,’ Gino said dispiritedly.

Magozzi wiggled his toes inside his shoes, figured he could feel about half of them. ‘Monkeewrench could probably do it without subpoenas.’

Gino abandoned his pocket search and gaped at him. ‘Are you crazy?’

‘If they’ve got the know-how to erase themselves, they’ve got the know-how to get us what we need without subpoenas and never leave a trace. We’re out of time, Gino. We need information.’

‘Great. So we’ll bust the guy with inadmissible evidence and he’ll walk anyhow.’

‘If we get a real lead from their research, we won’t need the inadmissible evidence to bust him. We’ll find something else to nail him with.’

Gino grunted. ‘Maybe. But asking civilians? And possible doers no less, to help eliminate suspects in a multiple homicide? We might as well call a psychic.’

Magozzi shook his head. ‘I don’t see that we’ve got any choice. As it stands now, every potential lead is a legal dead end. The only possible way to find the source is to trace those dead ends back to where they came from. Monkeewrench can do that and we can’t. Even if we made Tommy break his sworn oath and several laws, he’s just one guy. The only guy in the department with a prayer of tracking who the anonymous players really are. It all takes too much time –’

‘And we haven’t got time, I know, I know.’ Gino stared at him for a long moment, then went back to digging in his pockets. ‘If one of the partners is the killer, he or she sure as hell isn’t going to help us out and trace themselves. We’d never know if we could trust their information or not. You think of that?’

Magozzi nodded grimly. ‘I thought of that. I’m still going to ask them. What do we have to lose?’

‘If they throw in a red herring to steer us away from one of them, we’re losing time.’

‘No more time than we are now, butting our heads up against brick walls . . . what the hell are you looking for, anyhow?’

‘This!’ With a triumphant grin, Gino pulled a plastic bag out of the last pocket he searched and dangled it in front of Magozzi. ‘Salvation. Nirvana. Consolation for all the bad things in life.’ He opened the bag and filled the air between them with the aroma of homemade chocolate chip cookies.

Magozzi accepted one and bit into it. ‘I love Angela,’ he said around a mouthful.

‘I’ll tell her.’ Gino chewed happily. ‘Hope it doesn’t creep her out.’ He glanced over at a few more couples disembarking the ferry. ‘I suppose I should get back in there. Make sure McLaren isn’t pocketing the phone numbers of all the bridesmaids.’

‘Maybe we’ll get lucky,’ Magozzi said. ‘Maybe one of the guests spotted a tattooed beefer on a Harley or a two-hundred-pound sexpot.’

Gino snorted. ‘This is Minnesota. Half the women here go two bills.’

‘Yeah, but they’re not that sexy.’

‘More’s the pity. What’s her name? Annie what?’

‘Belinsky. And with what you’ve got at home, you shouldn’t be noticing.’

Gino smiled a little. ‘I’d have to be dead.’ He tugged up the collar of his parka. ‘Damn, it’s cold out here. Here comes the doc.’

Rambachan was cautiously disembarking the ferry, his eyes glued to the substantial, three-foot gangplank as if it were a rope bridge over the Grand Canyon. Magozzi watched him dodge the press and head toward them, his normally cheerful face drawn and weary, his gait a little unsteady.

‘Good evening, Detectives.’ Rambachan bobbed his head politely. Magozzi could have sworn his complexion was slightly gray.

‘Dr Rambachan. I take it you’re not too fond of boats.’

He gave them a sickly smile showing fewer teeth than usual. ‘Excellent detective work. Yes, you are correct. I have a pathological fear of watercraft and become quite nauseous while on board.’

Magozzi marveled that a man who spent his days with putrefying corpses could actually get seasick on a docked boat. ‘Sorry to keep ruining your evenings, Doc.’

‘No rest for the wicked.’ Rambachan tried for a rakish smile, obviously delighted that he’d had occasion to use an idiom. ‘And not to worry. I have already telephoned my good wife to tell her I would be very late. These murders are becoming somebody’s bad habit and I would like to complete this autopsy tonight. Perhaps it will shed new light on your investigation.’