Want To Play (Monkeewrench)

report.

Barring an alien invasion from Mars, the Hammond wedding reception itself probably would have topped the ten-o’clock news. Throw in a murder and top billing was guaranteed. And in this news-junkie state, Magozzi guessed over eighty percent of the population was watching the circus live right now. And one of those eighty percent was probably the killer himself.

A man in a tux with a face like a contract killer rapped on his window. Magozzi saw an Argo pin making a hole in his thousand-dollar lapel. He rolled down the window and badged him, then jerked his thumb over his shoulder. ‘Who belongs to all the cars?’

‘Relatives, friends, who knows,’ the man said with a sour expression. ‘Everybody on that goddamned canoe’s had a cell phone pressed to their ear since they found the body. That big Lexus back there?’

‘Yeah, I saw it.’

‘Came in like a tank, clipped one of our guys in the knee when he tried to stop it. Mother of some kid in the wedding party, and we’d have had to shoot her to keep her from getting through.’

‘Red won’t let you shoot people?’

The guy actually smiled, but it didn’t do much to soften his face. He still looked like a contract killer.

Magozzi parked between two squads and shut off the car. Fifty feet away the paddle wheeler was spitting out an occasional already-interviewed guest, tidbits tossed to a piranha press. Stunned by the turn their party had taken, blinded by the camera lights, the rich and powerful looked weak and strangely vulnerable in their couture gowns and black-tie tuxes. Most stood like sheep under the onslaught of shouted questions, but one older, bejeweled woman Magozzi thought looked familiar was having none of it. When the pushy female reporter from Channel Ten entered her space, the woman shoved her hard, right onto her pushy little ass.

Magozzi finally placed the woman as the mother of the groom. ‘Good for you, lady,’ Magozzi murmured with a dark smile, pleased that someone had finally done what he’d wanted to do for years.

He hadn’t taken two steps away from the car before the mob smelled fresh meat and turned on him. He raised a hand to protect his eyes from the lights of a dozen cameras, and winced at the sudden noise of shouted questions. There were too many to sort them out, and he was just about to stick his elbows out and barrel through, the hell with the department’s long-standing policy to always accommodate the press, when the blond from Channel Ten charged toward him, waving her porta-mike like a broadsword to clear a path.

She was too good-looking, too hungry for an anchor spot, and she had a tabloid mind-set that didn’t mesh well with Channel Ten’s bland, kid-oriented newscasts. Magozzi saw her leaving for another market within the year, and as far as he was concerned, it wouldn’t be soon enough. She was rude, aggressive, had a nasty habit of quoting out of context, and besides, she hadn’t pronounced his name correctly once.

‘Detective Ma-go-zee?’ she yelled so loudly it startled the other reporters into silence.

Magozzi saw several disapproving glances in the crowd. As a rule, the Minnesota media was remarkably well behaved. They’d all talk at once, they’d ask stupid, insensitive questions like, How did you feel when you learned your six-year-old was shot by her brother?, and sometimes, like now, they even shouted, but only so loud. He’d always wondered if there were some kind of silent agreement on a maximum decibel level so no reporter would ever cross the border from eager to rude. If there was, the blond had just exceeded it.

‘You bellowed?’ he asked, taking some small pleasure in the angry flash of her eyes as a titter spread through the crowd.

‘Detective Ma-go-zee . . .’ she started again.

‘That’s Magozzi. Ma-go-tse.’

‘Right. Kristin Keller, Channel Ten News. Detective, can you confirm that the man shot on the Nicollet tonight was using the restroom at the time he was murdered?’

Indelicate bitch, Magozzi thought. And definitely not a home-grown girl. Your proper Minnesotan never made public reference to bodily functions, no matter how vague.

‘I just got here, Ms Keller. I can’t confirm anything at this point. Excuse me.’ He started to ease through the crowd toward the gangplank, but swore he could feel her hot breath on his neck.

‘Was this another Monkeewrench killing?’ she shouted from behind him.

Oh shit. He stopped and turned around, saw her sly smile.

‘Our sources tell us that the murder last night in Lakewood Cemetery was identical to one in a computer game created by Monkeewrench, a local software company. Do you have any comment on that, Detective?’

‘Not at this time.’

Hawkins from the St Paul Pioneer Press spoke up. ‘Come on, Leo. We’ve had calls trickling in all day about that cemetery murder, from other people who were playing that game on the net. They all said that murder was right on, and now we’re hearing that this killing could be a match for another one in the same game.’

‘We’ve gotten the same calls,’ Magozzi said.

‘So the police department is aware of the connection between these killings and the game?’

‘We are aware of some similarities, and we are investigating.’

‘There were twenty murders in that game . . .’ Kristin Keller called out, and then her very own news chopper moved in overhead, drowning her out. ‘Get that fucking thing out of here!’ Magozzi heard her scream as he hurried through the crowd toward the gangplank.

McLaren met him on the main deck. ‘It’s really going to hit the fan now, isn’t it?’ he said dryly.

‘Yeah, and we’re going to get splattered big time.’

It had taken a murder to do it, but someone had finally upstaged Foster Hammond, and he had not been happy about it. The possibility of a murder at his daughter’s wedding reception might have given him a cheap thrill, but he’d lost his sense of humor when MPD had crashed the party en force.

The social event of the year was now a crime scene, the bride was inconsolable, twenty-five grand worth of food was going to end up in steam trays at a downtown homeless shelter, and Hammond’s illustrious guests had all been corralled into one salon for interviews, ‘like common criminals,’ he’d sputtered to Magozzi.

Magozzi was still patting himself on the back for holding his tongue throughout Hammond’s tirade, but when the bastard started talking about police incompetence he’d excused himself before he said something really inappropriate, like ‘I told you so, you stupid, arrogant prick.’

Now he was fifty yards away from the controlled mayhem that reigned on the Nicollet, staring into the inky black water of the Mississippi, wondering how the hell they were going to catch a cipher who lived in a cyberworld and killed in this one.

He looked up across the river and saw a million hiding places in the clusters of trees and underbrush, jagged rock formations, and dense shadows. The son of a bitch could be hiding there right now, watching him, gloating. But Magozzi didn’t think so.

With a deep sigh, he took one last look at the water and headed back toward the barrier of squads that were lined up side by side in the parking lot. Blue and red lights still flashed, bathing the side of the Nicollet with a jerky, blood-and-bruise rainbow.

Gino had finally extricated himself from the melee on the boat and was ducking beneath fluttering ribbons of crime-scene tape, heading toward him. He was overdressed for the twenty-degree weather in a puffy down parka, fur-lined cap, and fat snowmobile mittens that were good to seventy below. Two crime-scene techs followed him, carrying a gurney that held a black zippered bag.

‘You planning an Antarctic expedition later?’ Magozzi asked.

Gino glowered at him. ‘I’m sick of freezing my balls off. It’s only October, for crying out loud. Whatever happened to Indian summer? I swear to God I’m going to move south. I hate this friggin’ state. I hate winter. We’re going to have trick-or-treaters out in snowmobile suits next week and every time you open the front door you’re going to lose about a hundred dollars’ worth of heat –’

Magozzi interrupted a rant that could go on until spring. ‘So what have we got?’

Gino let out a tremendous sigh that filled the air around his face with billowy white clouds of frost. ‘Same ol’, same ol’. A nightmare from hell. What do you want first, gossip or facts?’

‘Definitely gossip. The truth hurts too much.’

‘Well, the mayor threw out his back bending over to kiss Hammond’s ass – apologizing, if you can friggin’ believe it, for causing such a ruckus. Stupid son of a