Shoot to Thrill (13 page)

‘Yeah. Or maybe he was on the take, and that’s really what got him kicked off the bench.’

Magozzi shrugged. ‘His rep was always pristine, even drunk as a skunk for all those years. He was a good judge when he had his house in order … and even when he didn’t.’

‘Yeah, I guess you’re right. So maybe he is a financial genius.’

The elevator drifted to a gentle, silent halt, and the doors slid open onto a beaming Wild Jim. He had a lowball in one hand and a half-smoked cigar in the other. ‘Detectives! Let me welcome you as the first guests ever to my modest riverside aerie. Please, come in.’

They took a few, tentative steps inside and let their eyes wander around the big, mostly empty space. There was no art on the walls, the furniture was sparse and nondescript, and the open gourmet kitchen sparkled as if it had never been used. It was utterly lacking in the owner’s personality, with the single exception of a sofa table that served as an easel for a long row of framed pictures. Every one of them featured the judge and a smiling, handsome young man.

‘Nice place you got here, Judge, and not so modest,’ Gino said politely.

‘It’s a considerable step down from my former domiciles, and most of the furniture is from IKEA and Target, but it serves me for the moment. Can I interest either of you in a libation? I’m drinking what they call a handcrafted bourbon, which would imply something a toothless hill denizen would concoct in a bathtub in the Ozarks, but it’s actually quite smooth.’

‘You’re very welcome.’ The judge noticed the direction of Magozzi’s gaze and gestured to the display with his glass. ‘My son. I suppose it’s a bit trite, having such a blatant memorial, but when you lose a child, your only child, all your sensibilities, both design-wise and otherwise, cease to matter.’

Magozzi and Gino both cringed inwardly, remembering the relentless media coverage of his son’s suicide, and all the speculations surrounding it. He hadn’t left much to chance by overdosing or wrist-slashing – he’d gone for the sure thing, which in this case had been a .44 slug with a Magnum load.

‘We’re really sorry about that, sir,’ Gino finally said with the genuine empathy of a fellow father. ‘Really sorry.’

‘Yes, so am I. There’s no getting over such a thing. Obviously.’ He gave them a thin, sad smile, then raised his glass with forced bravado and drained it. ‘After it happened, people always wanted a reason for why such a kind, intelligent young man with a promising future ahead of him would do such a thing. Hell, I wanted a reason myself, although I don’t know why. There just isn’t ever a justifiable explanation for such an act, and even if there were, it wouldn’t change the impact of the aftermath.’

Magozzi shook his head. ‘No, I’m sure it wouldn’t.’

The judge refilled his glass. ‘You know, I have recently come to realize that people who carry a great burden of guilt ravenously seek saviors anywhere they can, in all shapes, colors, and forms. Intellectually, I find the need for

‘You ever think about going to spin-dry, Judge?’ Gino asked him.

He looked amused. ‘Not once, Detective Rolseth. You can’t drink in rehab.’

‘That’s kind of the point. It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, you know. You already lived through that.’

‘You’re correct about that. However, I don’t believe alcoholism is a disease; I believe it is a choice, and I am thrilled with my choice. Not very progressive of me, but it’s the truth. At least it’s my truth.’

He wandered over to a seating area that faced a stunning vista of the Mississippi. ‘I’m going to sit now, and I invite you to do the same.’

Magozzi and Gino followed suit and settled into hard-seated, modern chairs that were so uncomfortable, it almost seemed as if they had been deliberately designed to be that way.

‘Can I at least cut some cigars for you gentlemen, since you’re not drinking? They’re the best Cuba has to offer – utter contraband a diplomat friend smuggles in for me on a biannual basis, but being that such legal transgressions don’t fall under your purview, I think you could indulge without ethical conflict.’

Magozzi shook his head. ‘We’ve just got a quick request for you, and then we’ll leave you to it.’ He noticed a flash of disappointment in the judge’s eyes, and perhaps a little

‘Suit yourselves. You are without a doubt consummate professionals, and I appreciate that, especially given my current disposition as a shamed, previously elected official who will never again have the honor of paying Bar Association dues. So, what’s this request?’

‘We got a call this morning from a beat cop who covers this area. An Officer Rondestvedt.’

‘Ah, yes. The nice young man with that rather unwieldy but regionally appropriate ethnic name. He was kind enough to escort me back to my condo last night.’

‘Did you tell him you were working with us on the drowning?’

‘Absolutely not. I imagine he merely inferred that from our conversation, but I never actually used the word
work
.’

Gino, who had little patience for subterfuge, just sighed. ‘Listen, Judge, you can’t be doing that, okay? No more name-dropping or inferences or golden lines of bull to the guys down there, you got it? If you do something illegal, weasel out of it some other way. You use our names out of school, it makes extra work for us, and we’ve got a full plate already.’

The judge nodded sternly. ‘I understand. And I will honor your request because I like and respect you both very much. I’m also sorry for any inconvenience I may have caused you. But in all honesty, justice has defined my entire life,

Gino tore his gaze away from the river view that was making him rethink his career choice. ‘You could help us out a lot if you could remember anything else from that night.’

‘I don’t even remember that night anymore.’ He narrowed his eyes and looked at both of them. ‘I’ve tried to follow the case in the news, of course. And obviously you know that the story barely made it above the fold in either the St. Paul or Minneapolis papers.’ He paused to give them a knowing smile. ‘Have we offered the press an edited police report, perhaps?’

Magozzi pretended nonchalance. ‘What makes you ask that?’

The judge chuckled, raspy and deep. ‘There were no details of any import in either paper or on any local news channel. No photos, except for the body bag going into the bus. Not even a mention of the victim’s gender. You did an excellent job blocking the media from the scene, and that’s the truly intriguing part. Coupled, of course, with the fact that Homicide is working what appears on the surface to be an accidental drowning.’

Magozzi looked down at his lap and almost wished he’d accepted the offer of a drink. So far the river drowning had been sidebar news. People were always drowning in Minnesota, and the Mississippi had taken more than her share over the past few years. Locals usually assumed it was an immigrant from some place or other who saw any body of water as a free fish shop, and never bothered to

‘Indeed I do. But I also suspect that the cause of death has already been established by the very efficient Dr. Rambachan, and that your continued interest in my memory of that night indicates that the death was homicide, not accident.’

Gino actually smiled. ‘You know what, Judge? You need a hobby. Bowling, maybe. Or bingo.’

The judge smiled. ‘Was your victim murdered before he ended up in the water?’

Magozzi and Gino exchanged a long glance that only the two of them could read. ‘No,’ Magozzi finally said. ‘He drowned all right. Somebody held him under the water and watched him die.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘We saw it.’

‘What do you mean, you saw it?’

‘Whoever did it took video footage of the murder and posted it on the Web.’

The judge looked skeptical. ‘Detectives, I spend a lot of time on the computer for lack of anything better to do, and I’ve seen some pretty disturbing things. But I doubt that any of them are real.’

‘Trust us, it’s real,’ Gino said.

‘How can you be sure?’

Magozzi and Gino shared a look, and the judge chuckled. ‘Ah, yes, never share details of an ongoing case with civilians,

Gino shrugged at Magozzi. ‘This stuff is basically all public knowledge anyhow. Hell, it’s all over the Web. Doesn’t get much more public than that.’

‘Come on, Detectives. Give a bored, worthless old drunk a puzzle to work on. It might even bring me back from the dead.’

Magozzi blew out a sigh. ‘Well, it turns out our drowning is part of a bigger case.’

The bleary eyes sharpened instantly. ‘How very intriguing. And what is this bigger case?’

‘Suddenly, murder films are turning up all over the Internet, from all over the country. And the reason we know they’re real is because every single murder was advertised in advance, in detail, right in chat room postings for anybody to see, and there’s a body to match every post.’

‘Including your drowning.’

‘That’s the first one we found.’

The judge’s ruddy, booze-hound complexion turned pale. ‘Good Lord. How many?’

‘Eight. That we know of.’

‘Eight?
’

‘Well, actually seven dead. The eighth one happened last night in Medford, Oregon, but the woman survived. She’s in ICU now.’

‘I’d say so.’

‘You’ve got a true maniac on your hands, Detectives.’

‘Actually, we think there’s more than one killer.’

He blinked. ‘This is simply overwhelming, even to me, and I lost faith in humanity long ago. How on earth did you go from a simple drowning two nights ago to a nationwide murder conspiracy?’

‘The Feds are involved, and they brought in Monkeewrench. They’re the ones who found the pre-posts that match with the victims – they all follow the same format. They seem harmless out of context, but the pattern suggests these guys are communicating. Showing off their trophies.’

The judge was thinking hard, and he seemed truly present for the first time since they’d met him. He’d even forgotten about his drink. ‘But surely, either Cyber Crimes or Monkeewrench will ultimately be able to trace these posts or these films, and then you’ll have your perpetrator. Or perpetrators.’

‘Whoever’s doing this is good. They know how to hide. So far, everything’s been untraceable. So there you go, Judge. Is that enough of a puzzle for you?’

The judge cocked a brow. ‘I don’t know much about computers, but I do know quite a bit about human nature. Our species is reliable in one way and one way only – eventually, we all make mistakes. I would guess your killers are living on borrowed time.’

‘What is it?’ Gino asked when he hung up, not at all liking the expression his partner was wearing.

‘Monkeewrench just found a ninth pre-post. “City of Big Cheese, pink polyester, near steer,” and they think Wisconsin’s a possibility. They want us to call Sheriff Halloran over there and see if he can’t help pinpoint a location, because they’re running out of time to maybe prevent the murder.’

The judge dropped his glass and it shattered on the floor, spilling amber liquid over white marble. ‘I used to have a cabin in Door County,’ he said, his voice and expression numb. ‘Interstate 94 to Wisconsin Highway 10. There’s a diner just before that turnoff called the Little Steer, and thirty miles north of that is the glass semi-trailer that holds what was then the largest block of cheese in the world, exhibited at the World’s Fair.’

Harley was pacing the office like a manic gorilla, pounding a beefy fist into his palm, boots banging the wooden floor. ‘Okay. City of Big Cheese. That’s in Wisconsin for sure, right?’

‘Absolutely positively,’ Annie agreed.

Agent John Smith had his elbows braced on the table, his hands pushing through his nowhere FBI haircut. ‘California produces more cheese per year than Wisconsin.’

Annie dismissed that silly notion with a fluff of her black bob. ‘That is not true. I have been to Wisconsin, that place is practically made of cheese, and they produce more than any other state. I read that on a placemat in a diner over there.’

Smith shrugged. ‘Point of pride for the Dairyland. California passed them in tonnage some time ago, but they’re still in denial.’

‘Crap,’ Roadrunner grumbled from his station. ‘I have almost three million sites on the search for Big Cheese. Give me some more parameters.’

‘Add California and Wisconsin,’ Harley said. ‘Otherwise all we’ve got in the post is “pink polyester” and “near steer.”

Annie snapped her fingers. ‘What did I tell you, Agent Smith? Near steer. Who has more cows than Wisconsin?’

‘That is an out-and-out lie.’

‘It might be.’

Annie raised her brows. That had sounded suspiciously like a tease, which stunned her. In her experience, teasing a woman was directly related to testosterone, but Agent Smith looked like someone had wrung every bit of that out of him long ago. She opened her mouth to tell him the further edification that in the one Wisconsin diner she’d been in, the waitresses had worn pink-polyester ugly suits, but the phone rang before she could utter a syllable.

‘Yes?’ Grace snatched her receiver, listened, said, ‘Got it,’ and hung up. She looked over at Annie. ‘Magozzi has a possible location. Interstate 94 and Wisconsin Highway 10, a diner called the Little Steer.’

‘Shit!’ Harley bellowed. ‘What county is that? Who’s the sheriff?’

‘I’m on it!’ Roadrunner shouted back.

Agent John Smith put his elbows on the table and his head in his hands. They were going to lose another one.

Lisa Timmersman didn’t believe there was a hope on God’s green earth of growing up thin on a Wisconsin farm. She had been a ten-pound baby born with her hand out for a cookie, to hear her father tell it, and for a while, looking at the rest of her hefty family, she actually believed she had just been a genetic fat bomb waiting to blow up.

It never occurred to her that growing up eating pure lard on homemade bread, and gravy on everything else, had anything to do with it. It was all she knew, and barely worth

And then skinny little Cassandra Michels transferred into her second-grade class from Milwaukee, told Lisa she was the fattest girl she ever saw in her life and that what she needed was an eating disorder. At that age, Lisa didn’t have the slightest idea what an eating disorder was, or where she could get one. But that single remark from that single person taught her a very important lesson: that the people outside the small circle of her childhood weren’t going to like her, not one little bit, all because she’d been born fat into a fat family and didn’t have a prayer of changing that.