Want To Play? (Monkeewrench)

16

The room was an olfactory museum of hundreds of meetings just like this one. Fast food, sweat, and the now-forbidden cigarette smoke – all these smells and more seeped from the plaster walls and rose from the uneven waves of the warped wooden floor.

Which is as it should be, Magozzi thought. Rooms where cops gather should smell like bad food and frustrated men and women and late nights and pisser cases, because smell was memory, and lingering smells were a memorial; sometimes the only one a crime victim got.

Magozzi looked over his audience from his perch on the front desk. Patrol Sergeant Eaton Freedman was in a crisp uniform custom-tailored to wrap itself around the three hundred pounds of coal-black muscle packed into his six feet nine inches. The rest of them – eight detectives besides him and Gino – wore low-end off- the-rack slacks and sport coats. Nobody wore their good suits on the job. You never knew what you might have to kneel in, or crawl through.

Chief Malcherson was another matter. The offal he was sometimes forced to crawl through was almost entirely political, and required a different uniform – designer suits and silk ties and shirts so starched the collars left a red necklace of abrasion around his throat. He had a thicket of white-blond hair that looked good on camera, and a bloodhound face that didn’t.

He was standing in a front corner now, intentionally setting himself apart from the men and women under his command, his expression more hangdog than usual. Today’s suit was a dark charcoal, double-breasted, suitable for mourning.

It wasn’t a designated task force. Not yet. Task forces were long-term, and Magozzi was praying this thing wouldn’t come to that. What he needed right now was manpower, and the chief had been disturbed enough by the murders to give it to him. Or maybe it was the media that really frightened him. Either way, now that Magozzi had laid out the Monkeewrench connection and passed out copies of the SKUD game photos, everyone else in the room was disturbed, too. Apparently the idea of murder as a game was universally chilling.

‘Any questions so far?’ he asked.

Nine heads lifted at the same time. The amazing synchronized head-raising team.

‘This is unbelievable.’

The other amazing heads turned to look at Louise Washington, the department’s showcase detective. Half Hispanic, half black, a woman and a lesbian to boot, she satisfied multiple minority groups. That she was damned good at her job seemed incidental to everyone except the cops who worked with her.

‘Bleep,’ Gino blatted from his place next to the door. ‘That was not in the form of a question.’

‘Isn’t this unbelievable?’ Louise corrected herself, which was the signal for Chief Malcherson to straighten up in his corner and pretend to take charge.

‘There is no cause for levity here. And no excuse for it. Two innocent young people are dead, and we have a psychopath roaming the streets of our city.’

Gino wiped his mouth with a beefy hand while the amazing heads dropped in unison and pretended to study the photos on their desks. The chief was well-intentioned, but he’d been off the streets for a long time and tended to talk like an old Humphrey Bogart movie. Magozzi broke in before someone blew it and laughed out loud.

‘Okay, listen up. Whoever this actor is, he took down two in less than twenty-four hours, so we’ve got no breathing time here. The first two murders followed the game murders almost exactly and he’s doing them in order. If this guy stays true to form, we know where the third one is supposed to go down; when is another matter. Could be tonight, could be this weekend. Everyone got photo number three?’

There was a rustle of papers and then a voice called out from the back of the room, ‘Hey, that guy’s sitting on a toilet, right?’

Magozzi looked back at Johnny McLaren sprawled all over a seat in the back row. He was the youngest detective on the force; bright red hair, sunny disposition, serious gambling problem.

‘Can’t get anything past you, Johnny. According to the game, murder three takes place during a party on a riverboat – a paddle wheeler, specifically. Normally we’ve got a few of those running on both the Saint Croix and the Mississippi, lunch, dinner, party cruises during high season, leaf tours through October, but we caught a big break this week. The only one running before the weekend is the Nicollet. They’ve got a wedding reception going tonight.’

‘Bunch of fools,’ Louise muttered. ‘It’s going down to the teens tonight. Nothing like wearing a parka over your wedding gown.’

‘Too bad we can’t just shut it down,’ Patrol Sergeant Freedman said, and heads turned to look at him. James Earl Jones lived in Freedman’s voice box, and the man couldn’t say two words without commanding the complete attention of anyone within listening range.

‘Nice going, Freedman,’ Gino spoke up. ‘A black man advocating a police state. Let me get on the horn to the NAACP, see if we can’t get you nominated for an Image award.’

Freedman grinned at him. ‘Hey, I’m all for a police state. I just want to run it.’ And then to Magozzi, ‘You boys reach out to the family?’

Magozzi nodded. ‘Yeah, and that’s the bad news. The blushing bride is Tammy Hammond.’

‘Oh shit,’ Louise Washington said. ‘The Hammond wedding? As in Foster and Char Hammond?’

‘None other. And let me tell you, these people have the entire “A” list on their speed dial. By the time Gino and I got to their place, Chief Malcherson had had calls from the mayor, four council members, the attorney general, and Senator Washburn.’ Chief Malcherson confirmed this with a miserable nod. ‘The message was pretty clear. Under no circumstances are we to in any way disrupt the Hammond wedding reception.’

‘Wait a minute.’ Tinker Lewis waved a hefty, tweed-coated arm from the back. He had sad brown eyes and a hairline that had receded halfway to Australia. Ten years in Homicide and he was still one of the gentlest men Magozzi knew. ‘We’re supposed to just sit by and watch this thing go down?’

‘They don’t think anything’s going to go down,’ Magozzi said, ‘and they might be right. There’s another charter Saturday night – some 3M exec’s retirement party – and if I were the killer, that’s the one I’d pick. No security, as compared to Argo covering tonight’s cruise.’

‘Argo? Red Chilton’s bunch?’

Magozzi nodded. All but the youngest in the room had worked with Red Chilton back when he was in Homicide, wearing cheap sport coats and driving five-year-old cars like the rest of them. Seven years ago he’d taken early retirement and started Argo Security with some of the best ex-cops in law enforcement. Now he was wearing Italian suits and driving a Porsche.

‘There are some pretty high-profilers invited tonight. The mayor, for one, couple of state congressmen, some film people. Hammond contracted with Argo a long time ago for this, and Red’s bringing damn near his whole roster. There’ll be twenty of them on site tonight, all armed, funneled gate, metal detectors, the whole nine yards. Hammond did agree to a “small, very discreet police presence,” but that’s it. It isn’t going to be our show.’

Tinker grunted. ‘So what do we get?’

‘Couple of squads and uniforms in the lot, six people on board dressed as guests. Gino talked to Red, brought him up to speed so his people don’t take down our people and vice versa.’

‘So we’ll have thirty armed people and a paddleboat,’ Freedman said. ‘Hell, we could point that thing south and probably take Louisiana.’

Louise Washington was shaking her head. ‘Our boy’s never going to show tonight.’

‘Maybe not, but if he does, this is our best shot at taking the guy down. This is the only murder in the game in a contained environment. The next one, for instance, takes place at the Mall of America, and I don’t even want to think about how we’d cover that.

‘Freedman, you and McLaren are heading up the detail. Gino will give you the rest of your roster when we’re finished here. Reception starts at seven, Red’s expecting you at the boat landing at five. Take a good look at his security arrangements. You see any holes, check back in and we’ll find a way to fill them. Any questions?’

‘Yeah, I got a question,’ McLaren said. ‘Is anyone telling the people coming to this thing there might be a little murder problem?’

‘Oh yeah.’ Magozzi stared at the back wall and remembered that glitter of excitement in Tammy Hammond’s eyes. ‘Hammond’s going to make an announcement after the ceremony, and Red’s people will do the same at the gate for anyone who skipped the church scene, but I don’t think it’s going to keep anyone away, not with all the security in place. Chief already called the politicos he knew, and they’re still coming, and the rest of them . . . I don’t know . . . I get the feeling they’re getting off on it a little.’

Louise made a face. ‘Rich people are totally weird.’

Magozzi glanced at his watch and hurried along. ‘Anyway, that’s the setup at the boat. In the meantime, some of the rest of you are going to be working the list of people who registered to play the game on the test site. We need to cross-check with public records and narrow it down so we don’t have to knock on over five hundred doors. Some of the addresses are going to be bogus –’

‘Like the killer’s, for instance,’ Louise snorted.

‘Maybe. Maybe not. This guy’s a gamer, remember. He wants to play. Putting his real name and address on that list, looking us in the eye when we go to interview . . . that kind of thing has to be worth big points, so pay real close attention to the possibles. Eliminate the seniors, kids under ten, quadriplegics . . . anybody else, look at hard. Once we get it honed down, we’ll hit the streets for the locals.’

‘Forget the out-of-towners?’ Freedman asked.

Magozzi shook his head. ‘Absolutely not. Some guy from Singapore could be sitting in the downtown Hyatt playing on his laptop. These murders were bang-bang, two nights in a row. Could very well be an out-of-towner making his mark before he heads home. Check every name on the list, and I mean every single one. Call whoever you have to, anywhere you have to. Do what you can by computer and phone; if you run across a possible out-of-state, or even out-of-the-country, pass it on to Gino, and he’ll deal with asking the locals for an on-site. Chief gave us open overtime on this, so anyone who wants to pull a double tonight, talk to Gino when we’re through here. He’ll set you up.’

‘What about the idiots that put this game out there in the first place?’ Tinker Lewis grumbled.

‘We’re going to look at them.’ Magozzi hopped off the desk and handed a single sheet of paper to Tommy Espinoza, a slight, twitchy man in the front row wearing a corduroy jacket over denim. He had his Latin father’s dark coloring, his Swedish mother’s blue eyes, and a pear-shaped belly that belonged to Chee-tos. Technically he was a detective, but in actuality, he never saw the streets. As the resident computer genius, he was far too valuable at the keyboard to risk outside the building.

‘Those are the stats on the five Monkeewrench partners, Tommy. Put together profiles on all of them ASAP. Before you leave tonight.’

‘You think one of them’s good for it?’

‘In my gut, no. They’re equal partners, and if this game goes in the dumper, they’ve each got a lot to lose. But they’re on the list. Anybody with access to the game is on the list, and they sure as hell have access.’

‘Did you ask any of these people if they had alibis?’ Louise asked.

‘Yeah,’ Gino said. ‘We learned that in our mail-order detective course. Every one of them was alone during both murders. Cross is the only one who’s married, but his wife was in LA when the jogger bought it, and he was alone at the office until late last night, so she can’t place him for either one.’

Espinoza glanced at the five names, then looked up at Magozzi. ‘You’re kidding, right? Roadrunner?’

‘That’s the name on his license,’ Gino put in.

‘No shit?’

‘No shit.’

Espinoza looked down at the names again, head shaking. ‘And Harley Davidson? Tell me these are not the names they were born with.’

‘You tell us, Tommy. By the way, McLaren, Freedman, you’ve got MDL blowups of these people in your handout. Special eye out for any of them tonight. They’re not on the guest list. Gino?’

‘I’m done.’

‘Chief?’ He looked over at Chief Malcherson, who was still standing in exactly the same spot, deep into the cool-as-a-cucumber routine that fooled absolutely no one. His cheeks were too red, his eyes as busy as his body was still. Magozzi figured he’d blow a vessel in about five minutes. ‘Anything you want to add?’

‘Just that we’ve got a lot of media downstairs. They’re all over this angel thing. Avoid them if you can, refer them to me, Magozzi, or Rolseth if you can’t. I don’t want to hear a lot of “no comments” on the news tonight. Sounds bad.’