Live Bait

8

The thing was, Magozzi liked to look at her, and sometimes he couldn’t get past that.

‘You’re staring at me again.’

‘I can’t help it. I’m very superficial.’

Grace MacBride smiled, but only a little. If she had a full-blown, many-toothed smile, Magozzi hadn’t seen it yet. ‘I have a favor to ask.’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s a big one.’

‘I can handle it.’ And he could, of course. He’d do anything for Grace MacBride, and all he asked in return was a few of these nights every now and then, when they’d sit at her kitchen table and drink wine and talk about nothing in particular while he looked at her black hair and blue eyes and dreamed of things that might be, if only he could be patient long enough.

‘I want you to look in on Jackson.’

Oh, now that wasn’t good. Jackson was a foster kid who lived down the block from Grace, and he would only need looking in on if Grace were planning to leave town. Goddamnit, maybe he’d overdone this patience thing.

Magozzi decided to be strong and silent and pretend he didn’t care, but then he opened his mouth and the truth fell out. ‘Grace, you can’t leave. I’ve got this whole seduction plan going.’

Another little smile. ‘This is a seduction? Six months and you’ve never even tried to kiss me.’

‘It’s a long-term plan. Besides, you weren’t ready for that yet.’

She reached across the table and touched his hand then, and Magozzi froze. With only a very few exceptions, Grace never touched people if she could avoid it. Oh, she’d grab your hand and pull you toward something she wanted you to see, but to touch simply for the sake of making contact – that was a rare thing. ‘Everything’s ready, Magozzi. We’ve been working on it for months. And now Arizona has something for us.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Grace, no one from Minnesota goes to Arizona in the summer. That’s totally backwards.’

‘Five women missing from the same small town in the past three years, and all they’ve got is a mountain of paperwork. It’s made to order for the new software program.’

Magozzi felt a sudden, unexpected rush of anger coloring his face, and turned his head so she wouldn’t see it. Grace MacBride had spent half her short life on the run from murderers, and what did she do when she was finally safe? Damn fool looked high and low for another murderer, then ran right toward him. She had this bizarre notion that confronting your demons was theraputic, which made a lot of sense when you were dealing with something like fear of flying, and no sense at all when your demons were armed and dangerous and probably insane.

‘The back of your neck is really red, Magozzi.’

He turned and looked at her, struggling to keep his voice even. ‘There is absolutely no reason for you to go there. Your program can crunch all the information from here.’

‘Magozzi. The five investigations have generated thousands of pages of paper and hundreds of tips, with new information coming in every day, and not a scrap of it is on computer. It would take a month just to transmit everything.’

‘So take a month.’

She shook her head once, sending waves of black hair swinging over her shoulders. It was an intentional distraction, he thought. He shouldn’t have told her he was superficial. ‘We don’t have that kind of time. This guy takes a woman every seven months, like clockwork. It’s been six months since the last one.’

Magozzi thought about slamming his fist down on the table. It seemed like such an Italian thing to do, but he just couldn’t see himself doing it. Apparently the gesticulation gene had passed him by on its hereditary journey. ‘You want to tell me how the hell you managed to find a police department in this country that isn’t computerized?’

Grace put her chin in her hand and looked at him. ‘You have no idea how many of those are out there. This one is a four-man office, one of those is the chief, and even he does double duty on patrol.’

Damnit, he hated it when she had good answers for every question. ‘Okay, then where are the State boys? The FBI? The Texas Rangers? Whoever the hell fills in down there when they’ve got a serial going?’

Grace made a face. ‘The Feds and the State were in it big-time at the beginning, but technically, all the cases are still classified as missing persons, not homicides. No bodies, no crime scenes, not a lot of press interest after it came out that most of the victims weren’t exactly model citizens. Most of them had a history – runaways, drug users, prostitutes – so they went down on the priority list real fast.’

Magozzi felt the first stab of hope. ‘So if there are no bodies, what makes them so certain they have a series of homicides at all? Runaways run, after all. It’s what they do. Maybe they’re still all out there.’

Grace was getting impatient. ‘That’s exactly the stone wall the chief is running into. When these kinds of women disappear and no one finds a body right away, the State and the Feds back off because everybody’s thinking, gee, they just probably went somewhere. But the chief believes he has a serial operating in his town, and he convinced us. The last victim wasn’t a user, a prostitute, or a runaway, although the State boys wrote it off that way. She was eighteen years old, driving to a grocery less than two miles away to pick up some ice cream for her father. She was the chief’s daughter, Magozzi. The man is looking for his kid, and no one will help him.’

And with that sentence, Magozzi felt himself lose the battle before it ever really began. Grace wasn’t running toward a murderer; she was leaving on a crusade. He closed his eyes and sighed.

‘This is the kind of case where the new software could really make a difference.’

Magozzi tried not to look miserable, because he had a vague idea that misery probably wasn’t macho. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t known this day was coming. Grace and her three partners in computer wizardry had been knocking themselves out since last October, working on the new program, getting ready to take it on the road, and now that the news was out, Arizona was just the beginning. This thing was really going to snowball.

He’d seen the article in a couple of the recent issues of law enforcement magazines that hit just about every department in the country, and couldn’t imagine a single cop who wouldn’t jump all over it, especially since the service wouldn’t cost them a dime.

The FLEE program was basically a computerized detective. It scanned in every single scrap of paper generated in a homicide case, saved it to memory, then examined itself for repetitions and similarities. Nothing was lost; nothing was forgotten, and that nightmare happened all too often when a dozen cops were reading and trying to remember thousands of pages of data. The software constantly cross-referenced incoming information with countless databases, identifying in a matter of hours connections that might require weeks or months of a detective team’s legwork.

Grace had explained the technical side to him once – he’d walked away with a monster headache. Magozzi could get around a keyboard pretty well, but what went on inside a hard drive made about as much sense to him as waving a wand over a kettleful of toads’ eyes. Finally, she’d made it simple.

Look at it this way, Magozzi. Say you have a victim who wrote a check to some antique dealer up north a few months earlier. And say on that day a deliveryman with a record of minor assault drops a load at the antique store. The program will tell you that in minutes, and you can take a closer look at the man. Now a good detective with a lot of free time might make the same connection eventually…

And he might not, Magozzi had thought then. There wasn’t enough manpower in the National Guard to do that kind of detailed legwork in a timely fashion.

Apparently he hadn’t said anything in a long time, and apparently that was worrying Grace, because she was trying to mollify him with food. He looked down at the plate of chocolate-covered strawberries she’d set in front of him and thought what a dirty fighter she was. He’d sell out his mother for a chocolate-covered strawberry, and Grace knew that.

‘Annie’s been in Arizona for over a week now,’ she told him, eliciting a small smile.

The mention of Annie Belinsky – one of Grace’s partners, and certainly her best friend – did that to most men. Profoundly overweight and unbelievably sensual, a single glance from the woman was like attending an orgy.

‘She’s looking for a house for us to rent, setting things up with the chief.’

His smile vanished. ‘You’re renting a house? Just how long do you think this is going to take?’

Grace shrugged. ‘We’ll rent by the month.’

Magozzi closed his eyes and sighed.

‘I have to go, Magozzi. I have to do something.’

‘What about the work you’re doing here? That program of yours has closed at least three Minneapolis homicides that have been open for years. You don’t call that something? Three families who finally have some closure. Three murderers identified…’

‘Magozzi.’

‘What?’

‘They were old cases.’

‘I know that. And we got a million of them. Gino brought over another file just this morning…’

‘Two of the murderers were dead, the third was in the vets’ hospital drooling in front of cartoons.’

Magozzi scowled and reached for the bottle of wine. Maybe if he got her drunk she’d stop making sense.

‘Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad we could help, and those cases were good tests for the software. Helped us work out the kinks. But there are people out there killing right now, and here we are, working your cold cases, sitting on a program that just might be able to save some lives.’

Magozzi looked her straight in the eye. ‘I’m Italian. I’m absolutely immune to guilt. You, obviously, are not.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning that this is your penance. You all still blame yourselves for the Monkeewrench murders.’

Grace winced. Monkeewrench had been the name of their software company, at least until it also became the media name for a killer, and a series of senseless murders that had nearly paralyzed Minneapolis last fall. They’d been trying to think of a new name ever since.

‘Of course we blame ourselves,’ she said quietly. ‘How could we not? But whatever our motivation, this is a good thing, Magozzi, and you know it.’ She held a strawberry up to his mouth and watched, mesmerized, as he took a bite. This was the most intimate, overtly sexual moment Magozzi had ever had with Grace, and it scattered his frustrations like a shotgun blast. God, he hated being so shallow.

She almost smiled again. ‘So you will look in on Jackson?’

One more strawberry like that, and I’ll adopt him, he thought, but what he said was, ‘I can’t believe you’re going to abandon that poor, motherless child.’

‘He has a very nice foster mother. He says she’s growing on him, even if she is white.’

‘That kid worships you, Grace. He’s here every single day. You can’t just run away from attachments like that…’ And then he stopped talking, wondering if that wasn’t also part of the reason she’d decided to take the software company on the road. Attachments were the most dangerous things of all, because someday they might lead to trust and maybe even love, and in Grace’s brutal past, people you loved and trusted almost always tried to kill you.

‘It won’t be for a few days,’ Grace tried to appease him without a strawberry. ‘They finished the custom work on the RV today, but Harley and Roadrunner still have to install all the electronics.’

Magozzi drained his wineglass and reached for the bottle again. ‘A few lousy days? Goddamnit, Grace, people give employers more notice than that. It’s too soon. I could hurry up the seduction thing. I haven’t even seen your ankles yet. Do you have ankles?’

Her eyes dropped to the tall English riding boots she’d worn every day of her life for over ten years, because back then there had been a man who slashed the Achilles tendons of his victims so they couldn’t run away. ‘I’ll come back, Magozzi.’

‘When?’

‘When I can take off the boots.’

Harley Davidson lived less than half a mile from Grace, in the only neighborhood in the Twin Cities he deemed suitable for a man of his wealth and taste.

Nowhere was St Paul’s reverence for the past more apparent than on prestigious Summit Avenue, a broad, tree-filled boulevard that rambled from the river bluffs to the edge of downtown.

At the turn of the century, timber, railroad, and milling barons had settled in this area, erecting vast, imposing mansions on the bluffs and up and down Summit, each newcomer trying to outdo those who had come before. A century later, many of the mansions were still intact and lovingly restored, either by descendants who hadn’t squandered the family fortune, the Minnesota Historical Society, or the newly wealthy.

Harley was one such newly wealthy Summit Avenue homeowner, much to the dismay of some of his ultraconservative neighbors. He often stomped the streets on pleasant evenings, an enormous, muscular man in leathers and motorcycle boots, his full black beard and ponytail bouncing with the weight of his steps. A frightening visage to residents, and that was before they got close enough to see the tattoos.

His house was a turreted, red sandstone monstrosity that was surrounded by a tall, wrought-iron fence with spikes large enough to skewer a bull elephant, but a step inside the massive front doors was like walking into a Bavarian castle from a Grimm brothers’ fairy tale. Ten thousand square feet of imported crystal chandeliers, exquisite antique furniture as oversized as the man who owned it, and dark, hand-carved wood from a bygone era that gleamed like ‘a Spanish whore’s eyes,’ as Harley put it, which explained a lot about why his neighbors took offense at his presence. He had a sound system that would knock your socks off piped through the entire mansion, which played non-stop hard rock or opera, depending on whether or not he was alone, because sometimes opera made Harley Davidson weep.

Last October, after the bloodbath at the Monkeewrench loft office, they’d moved the company to temporary quarters on Harley’s third floor while they worked on FLEE. Up until the day Annie had taken off for Arizona last week, he’d had Grace, Annie, and Roadrunner in his house all day every day for almost six months, and now he was pushing to make the arrangement permanent. Even after everyone left in the evening, the scents and sounds of all of them seemed to linger in the big old house, making it feel as though a family lived there, and Harley liked the feeling.

Tonight he and Roadrunner were in the carriage house – a two-story marvel with a cobblestone floor and tongue-and-groove oak paneling that ran up the walls into the arches of the cathedral ceiling. There were crystal chandeliers in here, too, which Roadrunner found ridiculously excessive. Besides, he missed the horse stalls and second-floor grooms’ apartments that had been in here when Harley bought the place.

Right now the enormous space that had once housed carriages, cutters, and the animals to pull them, was home to a very different kind of horsepower. The RV had been delivered today, custom work finally completed. It was a silver-skinned, tinted-glass behemoth, and it just looked wrong in this place.

‘It looks like a bus.’ Roadrunner was standing in front of the vehicle, spider arms akimbo, his eyes almost level with the vast expanse of the windshield, which was six and a half feet off the ground. He’d ridden his old ten-speed over from Minneapolis, just for the extra workout, and was wearing one of the Lycra biking suits he wore every single day – a black one tonight, because he was anticipating dirty work.

‘It is not a bus. Do not call it a bus. Technically, it is a luxury motor coach, and her name is Chariot.’

Roadrunner rolled his eyes. ‘Why do you have to name inanimate objects all the time? I hate that. Everything from your house to your dick.’

‘My dick is not inanimate.’

‘Sez you. If you’re going to spend all your free time thinking up names, think up a new one for the company, why don’t you.’

‘I’ve been racking my brain over that one for six months. How do you rename Monkeewrench? It’s like… sacrilege, or something.’

‘Yeah, I know. Like renaming a ten-year-old kid.’

‘Exactly.’

‘But we have to do it.’

‘I guess.’

None of them were happy about changing the company name. They’d been Monkeewrench for over ten years now, and the moniker had become part of their identities.

‘Gecko,’ Roadrunner said abruptly.

‘Was that a sneeze?’

‘Gecko. We should call it Gecko, Incorporated.’

Harley’s mouth made a circle of disbelief in the black frame of his beard. ‘Are you out of your friggin’ mind? It’s a goddamned lizard.’

Roadrunner shrugged. ‘It continues the animal theme. I think it’s good.’

Harley opened the big hydraulic door and stomped up the steps in disgust. ‘Yeah, well if that’s the direction you’re going, then I think we should just name it after you and call it Dipshit.’

Roadrunner pouted up the stairs after him, but quickly forgot about his wounded pride the minute he stepped inside the plush interior and took a look around. Thick, buttery soft carpets covered the floor, overstuffed down sofas huddled around a gleaming wooden table like silk-covered marshmallows, the spacious kitchen had granite countertops and sparkling chrome fixtures, and there was polished teak everywhere.

Harley folded his arms across his massive chest, a size extra-large smile plastered across his face. ‘So what do you think, little buddy? Looks more like Buckingham Palace than something with wheels, huh?’

Roadrunner’s eyes were as wide as a kid’s on Christmas morning. ‘Wow, this is awesome. I really like all the wood.’

Harley shrugged modestly. ‘I was sort of going for a yacht look without all the nautical crap. Come on, I’ll show you the rest. We haven’t gotten to the best part.’

Roadrunner followed him down the length of the RV, stopping briefly to marvel at a large bathroom complete with a full-sized shower and tub. At the far end of the rig was what Harley called the pièce de résistance – an enormous bedroom that had been stripped out and converted into an office. There were four computer workstations, a wall of equipment racks, and a mini-kitchen outfitted with a wine cooler and cigar humidor for Harley; a top-of-the-line, pro-model coffee/espresso maker for Roadrunner.

‘This is where our mobile command center is going, my friend. We are going to kick some ass and bust some balls from right here. Bad guys all across the country are quaking in fear as we speak.’

Roadrunner finally managed to tear himself away from the coffeemaker. ‘Man, Grace and Annie are going to freak when they see this thing. Where is Grace, anyhow? I thought for sure she’d be over here to check it out.’

‘Couldn’t make it tonight. She’s at her love palace with the Italian Stallion.’

‘You mean Magozzi?’ Roadrunner asked skeptically.

‘Yeah, who else?’

He thought about that for a minute. ‘You think they’re in love?’

Harley gaped at him in disbelief. ‘You just get a news flash, genius? Where the hell have you been for the past six months? Of course they’re in love.’

Roadrunner’s lower lip curled down in that tragic, wounded expression he always got when he thought he’d been left out of something. ‘I’ve never even seen them hold hands. I thought they were just friends.’

Harley rolled his eyes. ‘Jesus Christ, this isn’t think-tank material, Roadrunner. It doesn’t take more than a heartbeat and one functioning brain cell to know there’s something up the minute you see them together, getting all dopey and sloe-eyed on each other.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake. That’s why you think they’re in love? Honestly, Harley, you’re such a hopeless romantic. You only see what you want to see. Magozzi gets all dopey and sloe-eyed. Grace always holds back, and if you had two functioning brain cells you would have seen that. I know Magozzi’s in love with Grace, and I really feel sorry for the man, but Grace just isn’t ready to let herself go down that road. Maybe she never will be.’

Harley glowered at him. He didn’t like what Roadrunner had said, so he decided not to believe him.

‘Do not ever quash anyone’s dreams of romance. Love is a mysterious and unpredictable force, and stranger things than Grace and Magozzi getting together have happened. Hell, who knows? One day a human female might actually find you attractive. The world is just full of surprises.’