Want To Play (8 page)

‘Too goddamned many of those on the street,’ Gino muttered.

‘Tell me about it.’ Jimmy chewed on his lower lip while he pondered the scene before him. ‘It’s very clean, guys. Almost looks like a pro job, but then this girl is most likely a hooker, and who’s gonna spend the money to hit a hooker? Weirdest goddamn thing I’ve seen in twenty years and I’ve seen it all. You want her down yet, Anant?’

Rambachan was crouched on the pedestal, peering into the girl’s upside-down face with a high-intensity penlight. ‘A moment, please, Mr Grimm.’

Jimmy shook his head. ‘A year I been working with that guy, and he still calls me Mr Grimm. Makes me feel like a fairy tale.’

‘Maybe she knew something. Maybe posing her on the statue was a warning,’ Gino said.

‘Oh, I think she posed herself on the statue before she was shot,’ Jimmy said. ‘Which is even weirder. Check out the blood splatters. You got drip marks down the statue’s side and a whole lotta daisy-shaped blood splatters on the pedestal, a “crown” effect. Perpendicular impact, high height, high velocity. Which meant that she was probably already on top of the statue when she was shot. If she’d been killed somewhere else and hauled up there, there’d be different kinds of splatters and they wouldn’t be so consistent. And maybe not as much blood, depending on how long she’d been dead. God, I hate this job. I’m gonna take early retirement and start day-trading or something.’

‘We’re all just janitors,’ Gino mumbled. ‘Cleaning up somebody else’s messes.’

‘They don’t call me “The Grimm Reaper” for nothing,’ Jimmy said cheerlessly.

Mitch had made breakfast, his marital equivalent of half a dozen Hail Marys. He started plating the food when he heard the back door open and close.

‘What’s this?’ Diane breezed into the kitchen on a current of fresh air. Her cheeks were pink from her morning run, her blond ponytail damp when she pulled back the Gore-Tex hood. She looked like an ad for a health club.

He smiled at her. ‘Penance.’

‘I didn’t even hear you come in last night.’

‘I slept in the den. It was very late. I didn’t want to wake you.’

‘Hmm.’ She was trotting in place to cool off, running shoes squeaking on the tile. ‘Do I have time for a shower?’

‘Sorry.’

He carried the plates through the dining room he preferred, out to the glass sun porch, Diane’s favorite room in the house. It was a large space made small by a jungle of ferns and palms and flowering plants that all looked healthier than he felt. The air was heavy and humid and smelled of damp earth. Mitch hated that smell.

‘Oh, this is lovely, Mitchell.’ Diane settled at the wrought-iron table and admired her plate. A spinach omelet in fluted puff pastry, iced pears with grated Reggiano, a single fanned strawberry. ‘You must have done something truly awful. Are we going to have sex, too?’

He must have looked startled, because she smiled a little as she tucked a pear into her mouth and held out her cup. ‘Half, please.’

‘How’s the new painting coming along?’

‘Badly. If I don’t have any luck today, I may pull it from the show.’

‘Oh. Sorry.’

‘Don’t be silly. It’s not your fault, now is it? And one painting more or less isn’t going to make any difference to the gallery. This is really extraordinary. Nutmeg?’

‘Right.’ He laid his fork upside down on the edge of his plate, cue to a nonexistent waiter. He wasn’t hungry at all; still a little off-balance from her sex remark.

‘I can’t place the cheese.’

‘Five cheeses, actually.’

Silver scraped china as she chased down the last bite of her omelet. ‘You are so good at this. You really should come out of the closet and cook for your friends.’

His cup clattered into the saucer. ‘Why do you do that?’

She looked up, all innocence. ‘Do what?’

‘Call them
my
friends. They’re
our
friends, not just mine.’

‘Oh. Did I say that? I didn’t mean anything by it. It’s just that you spend so much more time with them . . .’ Her voice and gaze drifted until she focused on his plate. ‘You aren’t going to let that go to waste, are you?’

He stared at her for a moment, almost irritated enough to pursue the issue if it weren’t so damn hot in this room; so damn
close
. When she glanced at his face, her own crumpled instantly. My God. What had he looked like? What had she seen?

‘Please,’ he said quickly. ‘Help yourself. I ate while I was cooking.’ He wanted to run, out of the room, out of the house, but he made himself sit there and smile until her mouth curved in a tentative answer, and then he watched in silence as she polished off both breakfasts. It was amazing, really. She had an almost frightening appetite, and yet remained in perfect physical condition, never gaining or losing a single pound.

Use that. Give her something. You owe her that much.

‘I don’t know how you do it, Diane.’ He added another smile for good measure. ‘If I told Annie what you ate this morning she’d have you killed.’

She laughed out loud, almost frightening him. She never did that. ‘Maybe Annie should start running. You all should, for that matter. It’s not healthy being cooped up in that loft all day, just sitting in front of those silly computer screens.’

‘We take an occasional break. Roadrunner bikes and does his yoga, Grace lifts weights . . .’

‘Does she? I didn’t know that.’

‘Maybe that’s because you hardly see her anymore.’

‘I try to keep in touch. I called her the minute the show was over in Los Angeles, didn’t I? We had a wonderful chat.’

‘So call her more often. Come into the city for lunch. She’d love that.’

‘You’re right. That’s precisely what I should do, right after this show is over.’ She sipped at her coffee and opened the newspaper he’d left neatly folded to the left of her place. ‘Hmm. Market took a tumble yesterday.’

Mitch pushed back his chair. Time to leave.

‘Oh dear.’

‘What?’

‘I certainly don’t need to read that sort of thing with my morning coffee.’

‘What sort of thing?’

She passed him the paper with a disgusted flick of her wrist. ‘There simply are no good newspapers anymore. They’re all like tabloids, reporting every single grisly detail . . .’

She may have continued talking, but if so, Mitch didn’t hear her. He’d started to read the article that had dared to offend, eyes darting back and forth, then freezing suddenly while all the blood drained from his face.

‘It’s horrible, isn’t it?’

He blinked at her, confused for a moment, then remembered to nod. ‘Yes. Horrible.’

‘Well, I’m off to the shower.’ She popped out of her chair and paused long enough to kiss the top of his head. ‘Thanks for the breakfast, darling. It was wonderful.’

Mitch refolded the paper carefully, running a thumbnail along the crease. ‘My pleasure,’ he murmured, but by that time, Diane was already in the shower.

The Monkeewrench loft space was cavernous and silent, still asleep like most of the city. The sun was just beginning to creep over the eastern horizon and its weak light struggled to penetrate the bank of windows on the far wall.

In the dark maze of desks in the center of the room, a computer monitor hissed to life – an eerie blue window glowing brightly in the gloom. Slowly, letter by letter, red pixels coalesced on the screen and a message materialized:

WANT TO PLAY A GAME?

Down on the ground floor, the freight elevator rumbled and groaned, then wheezed to a stop at the loft. Roadrunner emerged, walked over to the computer monitor, read the message, and frowned. He tapped a few keys, but the message remained and his frown deepened. He tapped a few more keys, then shrugged and headed for the coffeemakers.

As he started grinding beans, he gazed out the windows at the awakening city below. In the distance the Mississippi River flowed sluggishly, as if it were practicing for its winter hibernation in ice, and even the first wave of commuters was moving more slowly on this frosty morning. Winter was a state of mind in Minneapolis, and it always started long before the first snows flew.

He began the meticulous work of leveling tablespoons of fresh coffee and carefully depositing them into a new filter. He was so intent, so focused on his chore that he never saw the massive figure creeping silently, stealthily, toward him through the shadows.

‘BEEP, BEEP!’

Roadrunner twitched convulsively and sent coffee grounds flying. ‘God
damnit
, Harley, that was Jamaican Blue!’

‘Heads up, little buddy.’ Harley shrugged off his battered leather bike jacket and tossed it on the back of his chair.

Roadrunner started scooping up coffee grounds with angry sweeping motions. ‘Where the hell were you, anyhow? I thought the place was empty.’

‘I was taking a leak. And you gotta loosen up a little. You got a spooky little ritualistic thing going on with that coffeemaker. Every time you get within five feet of it, you enter a fugue state. It worries me.’ He glanced over at the monitor where the red message still glowed. ‘You working on Grace’s computer?’

Roadrunner looked over his shoulder. ‘Do I look suicidal? It was up when I got here. Check it out. I can’t get it to clear.’

Harley punched a few keys with sausage fingers, grunted, then gave up with a shrug. ‘Another glitch.’ He blinked in surprise when the letters disappeared abruptly. ‘Gone now. Grace must have been transferring data from home. Guess what?’

‘Your dick fell off.’

‘You stay up all night thinking of that, you asshole? Listen to me. I checked the site this morning. Almost six hundred hits, over five hundred preorders for the CD-ROM. Some of them are ordering two, three copies. We are gonna be filthy, stinking rich.’

An hour later Annie and Grace were at their respective computer stations, clattering out lines of arcane programming language that the computer would eventually translate into the twentieth murder scenario. Harley was loading a CD into the boom box on the counter while Roadrunner circled around him, snapping impromptu mug shots of him with a digital camera.

‘What the hell are you doing with my camera?’

‘Just seeing how you look pixeled. We need to take care of the photo shoot today so I can start integrating it.’

Harley shook his head. ‘I’m not going to be the dead guy.’

‘It has to be you. I’ve already been the dead guy three times. And it has to be a man.’

Grace lifted her eyes as the freight elevator rumbled up from the parking garage. ‘Ask Mitch.’

Annie snorted. ‘Right. You’d have to drug him first. What the hell is this music?’

Grace listened for a moment, then grimaced. ‘ZZ Top. Harley, take it off.’

‘ZZ Top happens to be a seminal band of the 1980s, you cretins.’ He collapsed under the weight of Grace’s gaze. ‘All right, all right, but no more classical. That stuff puts me to sleep.’

Harley settled for instrumental jazz, then went back to his chair and swiveled to prop his jackbooted feet up on Roadrunner’s pristine desk. ‘You know what I’m going to do with my share of the money?’

‘Get your feet off my desk.’

‘I’m going to buy a really nice place in the Cayman Islands. Or maybe the Bahamas. Grass roof, nice stretch of beach, big hammock under a palm tree. And chicks in thongs with huge tits. You guys can come down and visit whenever you want.
Mi casa, su casa.
’

Grace rolled her eyes. ‘I can’t wait.’

‘Harley, if you don’t get your feet off my desk . . .’

Harley gave Roadrunner a toothy grin and swung his feet back down to the floor. ‘How ’bout you, Grace? What are you gonna do with the loot?’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Maybe get an underground bunker in the Idaho panhandle, start stockpiling weapons, get a few cabana boys in thongs with huge . . .’

They were all laughing when the elevator gate slid up into its moorings. Mitch walked into the room, a newspaper clenched tightly in his right fist.

Grace waved him over. ‘Come on, Mitch. Smile for the camera. You have to be the dead guy for number twenty . . . Jesus. What’s the matter with you?’

Everyone looked up and an ugly hush fell over the room. Mitch was not looking good. His face had a decidedly unhealthy gray cast, he was wearing a polo shirt and chinos instead of a suit, and his hair was uncombed. For anyone else, this would be the equivalent of going out in public naked.

He laid the newspaper down on Grace’s desk. ‘Has anyone seen a paper?’

‘Not since ’92,’ Harley said. ‘What’s up?’

‘Just read it.’ He pointed to the article, then stood to one side as the others crowded around Grace’s desk to read over her shoulders.

Grace started to read aloud. ‘ “The body of a young woman was discovered early this morning. . .” ’ She stopped abruptly.

‘Oh my God,’ Annie whispered.

They all read in silence for a moment, frozen in position. Harley was the first to look away. ‘Jesus Christ on a crutch.’ He took the few steps to his desk and sat down very slowly. Annie and Roadrunner did the same, and then they were all sitting, looking at their hands or their monitors or at anything except each other. Only Mitch remained standing, the evil messenger.

‘Maybe it’s a coincidence,’ Roadrunner mumbled.

‘Oh, right,’ Annie snapped. ‘People are flopping dead girls over that statue all the time. Oh, Jesus God, this can’t be happening.’

‘It just said she was
on
the statue, not on
top
of it,’ Roadrunner insisted desperately. ‘Maybe they found her on the pedestal. Maybe it was a drug thing, or a gang thing. For Christ’s sake we don’t know what goes on in that cemetery, it could have been
anything
 . . .’

‘Roadrunner.’ Harley’s voice was uncharacteristically gentle. ‘We have to find out. We have to call the cops. Right now.’

‘And tell them what?’ Mitch asked, his eyes on Grace. She was still staring at the newspaper, her face absolutely expressionless.

‘I don’t know. That maybe there’s some freak out there who liked one of our murder scenes so much he decided to do it for real, I guess.’

Roadrunner’s eyes slid sideways to his monitor, where the number of hits on the game site kept climbing as he watched.