Want To Play (Monkeewrench)

‘But . . . you didn’t even know those people. They were just . . . profiles. In a game, for God’s sake. It was just a game.’

Diane actually smiled at her, and it was so frightening Grace’s knees almost buckled. ‘That’s exactly it. I knew you’d understand. I was actually killing the game, not real people.’ Her eyes narrowed slightly. ‘Mitch tried to talk you out of that game, but you just wouldn’t listen, would you? Do you have any idea what you put that man through?’

‘You murdered people because Mitch didn’t like the game?’

‘Oh, Grace, don’t be ridiculous. It was much more than that. The game was going to destroy us. It was the end of everything!’ She paused a moment, head slightly tipped, listening.

Grace heard it, too. A siren. Distant. On its way here, or somewhere else? Diane didn’t seem a bit troubled by it, which terrified her.

‘Anyway,’ Diane continued calmly, ‘I had to stop it before players started to get to level fifteen. Cops play games like that, you know. What if some of them in Atlanta saw that little crime scene you dreamed up and started asking questions?’

Grace’s thoughts were spinning, colliding, trying to make sense of insanity. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Murder fifteen, Grace. You laid it all out for them. A half a dozen agencies and hundreds of cops couldn’t figure out who killed the people in Atlanta, and you told them with one stinking little clue in your stinking little game. Thanks a lot, Grace, for almost ruining my life. Obviously, I had to stop the game before anyone saw it. And I did. Killed a few people and you pulled it right off the web, just like I knew you would. But then those stupid cops sent your prints to the FBI, and that brought up the Atlanta murders anyway, and everything just started to fall apart.’

More sirens. A lot more, and they were close. Diane didn’t bat an eye.

Maybe she doesn’t hear them. Get her to listen. What was in murder fifteen? What clue was she talking about? No. Don’t think about that. It isn’t important now. Just try to distract her so you can move the Sig slowly, slowly, a fraction of an inch at a time . . .

‘The police are coming, Diane. Listen to the sirens.’

‘Oh, don’t worry about them. It’s all part of the plan. Would you like to know the plan? It’s really quite ingenious. My original intention today was to kill just you, of course. I didn’t want to kill everyone, because then there’d be no Monkeewrench and Mitch would be unhappy, but . . . you know how it is. People just kept getting in the way.’ She frowned, irritated. ‘Like that woman cop downstairs. Now that ruined everything. What the hell was she doing here anyway? Did you know she was from Wisconsin? I saw it on the patch on her shirt.’ She tapped her forefinger against her lips, puzzling over something, then her face cleared abruptly. ‘Anyway, by the time the cops manage to break into the building – and I should give you a nod of thanks here, Grace, for this very excellent security system – I’ll be hysterical. I think I can do that pretty well. I’ve been practicing. And then all I have to do is tell them you just snapped and started killing people and I had to shoot you in self-defense. You know the FBI is just going to love that. They always wanted to believe you were the killer in Georgia anyway, and now they can, and they’ll get to close that pesky file. So everybody’s happy.’

Her eyes darted to the elevator, then back, and her face darkened. ‘Well, not completely happy. It really pisses me off, Grace, that you made me kill Mitch.’

Your fault, Grace. All your fault.

‘He loved you,’ Grace mumbled, and suddenly the Sig was so heavy, and her arm was so tired. Had she moved it another fraction of an inch toward Diane? She wasn’t sure. ‘How could you kill him?’

Diane’s eyes narrowed and Grace searched them for rage, hatred, some kind of human emotion, but all she saw was annoyance. ‘Well, that was not my fault. He was not supposed to be here. He promised. HE PROMISED. He walked in on me right after I shot that woman cop, and then of course I had to explain the plan, and naturally he didn’t want me to kill his precious Grace.’

And then in a conversational tone so ordinary it made the hairs rise on Grace’s arms: ‘We had the worst fight of our marriage, Grace. The absolute worst. He was going to kill me, his very own wife, just to keep me from killing you, do you believe that?’

Yes, Grace believed that. Mitch would have done anything for her. Anything. She tried to imagine what it must have been like for him, finding out his wife of ten years was a murderer. But he’d lived with her, damnit. How can you live with someone for that long and not just know? ‘I don’t understand how you kept it from him all these years.’

Diane was puzzled. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Georgia.’

And now she was amused. Enormously amused. ‘Oh, Grace! You think I killed the people in Georgia? Oh, God, that’s funny. Why on earth would I have done that? Mitch killed them.’

Grace stared at her, stupefied. Her ears recorded gunfire from somewhere outside; a lot of shots, close together, but her mind refused to accept the information for processing. ‘That’s crazy. Mitch would never . . .’ she started to say, and Diane laughed a little, mirthlessly.

‘It wasn’t the brightest thing he’d ever done, but he wasn’t thinking that clearly in those days. I suppose he had some twisted idea that if he just eliminated all the people around you, you’d run right into his arms. It didn’t work, of course, so he had to satisfy himself to be . . . what? Your best friend?’

Grace nodded, numb.

‘I happened to be following him the day he killed that Johnny person you used to date – oh, for heaven’s sake, the irony just struck me. Ten years ago I walked in on him after he’d killed someone; this morning he walked in on me after I’d killed someone. Huh. Full circle.’

Her eyes seemed to lose their focus as her mind drifted a little before coming back with a snap. ‘Anyway, I’d already chosen Mitch as the man I was going to marry, so it worked out perfectly. I got the husband I wanted, he got a wife who couldn’t testify against him.’ She wrinkled her nose in distaste. ‘And everything would have been fine if the FBI hadn’t locked you up in that house with Libbie Herold. I’m telling you, Grace, that just sent him right over the edge, not being able to get to you. Personally, I think he may have been just a little bit psychotic then, hell-bent on “rescuing” you, and I couldn’t talk him out of it. And that’s when he lost the necklace.’

‘Necklace?’

Irritated, Diane pushed the .45 harder into Grace’s chest. ‘Grace, try to keep up! The necklace. Your little Speedo joke.’

And then Grace saw it. In the game, clutched in the hand of murder victim fifteen, and in real life, around Mitch’s neck all those years ago in college. Always under his shirt or sweater so no one else would see it.

‘The idiot lost it when he was killing that woman FBI agent, which wasn’t a problem until you put the damn necklace in that damn game and then put it on the goddamned Internet. And when the Atlanta cops see that they’re going to remember it’s just like the one they have in the evidence locker. Then guess what happens? They’ll come up here and start asking questions, how you came up with that idea, and you’ll tell them, gee, I gave Mitch a necklace just like that back when we were in college in Atlanta, and that would be it, end of story, because Libbie Herold cut him. His blood was all over the scene. And now with all the DNA testing . . .’

Grace was barely listening. Mind, body, spirit – they were all numb. The rage she’d been counting on, the hatred that had filled her up and made her strong, had drained away in a flood of hopelessness.

It had all been for nothing. Silly, really, when she thought about it. All that security to protect herself from a killer who’d been beside her every step of the way. All that sharp-eyed paranoia, suspicion of every strange face, when she’d been too blind, too stupid to see the truth behind one of the faces she thought she knew best.

The Sig was growing heavier, and the muscles in her outstretched arm were starting to cramp. Why was she holding it there anyway? She would never have a chance to use it.

Suddenly there were terrible noises from downstairs. Something big crashing, metal against metal, again and again.

Diane’s eyes flickered. ‘Oh dear. The cavalry is getting serious. I guess we’d better finish up here. What the hell are you doing?’

Grace blinked, a little confused.