Live Bait

Magozzi. We do what we can.’ He pulled his Mont Blanc from his pocket and looked at Langer and McLaren. ‘Do we have a final report on the search of Thomas Haczynski’s apartment yet?’

‘It’s coming, but the preliminary pretty much tells the story.’ McLaren flipped open a little ragged notebook with doodles all over the cover. ‘The kid had a.22 under his mattress that Ballistics confirmed early this morning. Same gun that shot Morey Gilbert. And the nine he used on Marty killed Rose Kleber and Ben Schuler. Plus we got a journal that lays out what he was doing and why, right up to the last entry, just before he went to the nursery last night to kill Jack. It’s grim reading, I’ll tell you. Gives me the creeps. He’d been planning this for over a year, down to the last detail, even set up that cell phone scam to make it look like he was living in Germany.’

Malcherson looked up from his tablet. ‘Explain.’

‘We just told Gino and Magozzi about that,’ Langer said. ‘Montgomery had one of those expensive hybrid phones in his apartment – the kind that works here and in Europe. It was pretty simple, really. All he had to do was set up a German account, complete with German telephone number, and no read-back, including ours, could ever tell the difference. He could take calls or call out from anywhere in the world, and it would still look like he was in Germany.’

‘Little bastard,’ Gino grumbled, still seething about being fooled. ‘Bawling one minute, talking German the next, pretending to be his own uncle.’

Malcherson sighed. ‘So essentially, Magozzi’s and Rolseth’s cases are closed.’

‘I’d say so,’ Langer agreed. ‘The Arlen Fischer case is something else. We know Morey Gilbert and his crew killed him, but it’s all circumstantial. A bunch of plane tickets and a lot of conjecture. We can’t actually put a gun in the hand of any of them for even one of the sixty-odd murders we know they committed, let alone Arlen Fischer. And as for Morey’s confession to Lily, a second-year law student could tear her to shreds. She’s old, she was wakened out of a sound sleep, she could have been dreaming… like that.’

‘Same thing with Jack’s story about what happened in Brainerd,’ Gino said. ‘From Jimmy Carter, maybe. From a drunken P.I. attorney who walks around downtown Wayzata in his bathrobe – I don’t think so.’

‘So what’s the problem?’ McLaren asked. ‘It’s not like we’re going to prosecute these people. They’re dead.’

‘If we try to close Arlen Fischer based on our conclusions without adequate proof, we are prosecuting these people, without a trial,’ Malcherson said. ‘And I, for one, do not want to try to convince the public to take our word for it that three sweet, elderly pillars of the community, who suffered and survived the horrors of concentration camps only to be murdered in our city, were in fact, a gang of serial killers.’

McLaren threw up his hands. ‘So don’t close the case. Keep it open forever.’

‘That won’t work, either,’ Langer said. ‘Jeff Montgomery’s journal is public information the minute we close the Gilbert, Kleber, and Schuler murders, and that journal details those three murdering his father in Brainerd. Then everything unravels, and we take the heat for not following through.’

Malcherson touched a finger to one cottonball eyebrow. ‘The press is going to have a field day with this. This is the kind of story that journalists dream about. Nazis hiding in plain view, Jewish vigilante death squads… the whole city is going to be taking sides over this one on the airwaves for a long time, and we’re going to be right in the middle. And that’s just what happens locally. When the story hits the wires, this department is going to be caught up in a global media firestorm.’

McLaren slid down so far in his chair his head almost disappeared behind his desk. ‘So we’re screwed if we try to close Arlen Fischer, screwed if we don’t.’

‘That appears to be the case, Detective.’

‘Well, great. Langer, give the chief your gun. He can shoot us all, then take his own life.’

‘I might have another option.’ Malcherson had that flinty look in his eyes that meant he might be thinking about smiling in the next six months or so. ‘Technically, when we turn a case over to the FBI, it’s officially closed in our department. Any and all queries would have to be referred to Special Agent in Charge Paul Shafer. We would no longer be in a position to discuss the case with anyone. Not law enforcement, not Interpol, and certainly not the media. Our hands would be tied, gentlemen.’

One by one they all started to smile for the first time in twenty-four hours. All except Johnny McLaren, who was looking at Malcherson with undisguised awe. ‘Chief, you are the sneakiest son of a bitch on the planet.’

‘Thank you, Detective McLaren.’

Malcherson was all the way to Gloria’s desk when Gino called after him, ‘Hey, Chief.’ Malcherson stopped in his tracks, but didn’t turn around. ‘Thumbs-up on the navy suit. The average Joe can get away with black in mourning situations, but a man in your position of power? Might have been a little too much drama. I think you nailed it again.’

Chief Malcherson waited until he was out in the hall, and then he smiled.

Twenty minutes later, Detective Aaron Langer walked into the chief’s office just as he was hanging up the phone. Malcherson looked inordinately pleased with himself.

‘That was Paul Shafer,’ he said. ‘He seemed absolutely delighted to hear that we finally realized the Arlen Fischer case was beyond the scope of our investigative abilities.’

Langer smiled. ‘What did you tell him, sir?’

‘The absolute truth. That the Minneapolis Police Department doesn’t have the media skills to manage a case of this magnitude.’

‘That had to be irresistible.’

‘I believe it was. He’s on his way over now to pick up the file. Personally.’

‘So as far as we’re concerned, the Arlen Fischer case is now closed.’

‘That’s correct.’

‘That’s good news, Chief.’ Langer removed his sidearm, ejected the clip, and cleared the chamber, then laid it butt first on the desk.

Malcherson stared at it, and then at the badge case Langer laid next to it.

‘May I sit down, sir?’

‘Absolutely.’

Langer settled in the chair, then looked out the window because he couldn’t look the chief in the eye. He hadn’t been able to do that for a long time now. ‘Marty Pullman was at my desk the day I got that call telling us where we could find Eddie Starr. I wrote down the address, then left the office.’

Malcherson waited, his face still, his expression unreadable.

‘Marty overheard the call. He knew whose address that was, and I knew he knew it. So I left the note in plain view and just walked away.’

Malcherson looked down at a fingerprint in the high gloss of his desktop, wondering whose it was. ‘What on earth were you thinking, Detective Langer?’ he asked softly.

‘I’m not sure, sir. Maybe that Marty deserved a chance to beat the shit out of the man who killed his wife before we got there. Or maybe somewhere in the back of my mind I was thinking he might do more than that. I honestly don’t know, and it really doesn’t matter. The point is that when I saw Eddie Starr’s body, I knew damn well what had happened. Marty may have pulled the trigger, but I made it possible when I walked away from my desk that day.’

Malcherson cleared his throat softly. ‘Detective Langer, I will never believe that your intent was for Marty Pullman to commit murder.’

Langer’s smile pulled at one side of his mouth. ‘Really? Well I’m not so sure, and it’s been driving me crazy for months. And I’d spent months before that looking at what Morey and Lily and Jack were going through, watching Marty fall apart a little more each day, and all I could think of was how unfair it was that a scumbag like Starr could destroy so many good people… you see what I was doing? I was deciding, sir. Deciding who was good and who was bad and maybe even who deserved to die. Just like Marty did, and Morey and all the rest. Then when this case started to unravel and I realized that Eddie Starr was a piker, that if he’d lived another hundred years he wouldn’t be able to catch up to Morey Gilbert’s body count… the good guys and the bad guys kind of blended together until the only thing I was sure of was that I’d never been able to tell the difference.’ His eyes drifted down to his badge. ‘I should have turned that in, turned myself in, a long time ago.’

He stood up then and patted his pockets, already missing the weight of his life that he’d left on the Chief’s desk. Then he met Malcherson’s eyes head on and smiled. Strange, he thought, how good that felt. ‘You know