‘We dropped it at the lab last night, remember?’
‘Oh. Yeah. I forgot. Christ, I’m operating on about three brain cells here. You catch the news?’
‘Just now. Channel Ten has the game up to victim five.’
‘They all do. Papers, too. Looks like none of the players calling the tip lines got past the fifth murder.’
Magozzi stretched to reach a piece of bacon off his plate. ‘You want to go to work or do you want to go shopping?’
‘Shopping?’
‘Megamall’s going to be empty.’
‘Very funny. What are you chewing?’
‘Animal fat. Bacon.’
Gino was silent for a moment. ‘Well, that clinches it. It’s the end of the world.’
It was nearly eight o’clock when Magozzi cruised past City Hall and almost decided to turn around and go right back home.
Satellite vans lined both sides of the street, and only half of them were local. He saw Duluth, Milwaukee, even Chicago, and a slew of low-end rental cars that meant freelancers and wire stringers were here in force.
A few reporters were doing stand-ups in front of the building, and the sidewalk was a mess of cables. They’d make the network news tonight for sure, and then the city council members would shit bricks at what the story would do to the Minneapolis convention trade.
He circled the block and parked in the ramp, where clerks and secretaries would have a hard time finding an empty space this day, because all the cowardly detectives had chosen to slink in a back door. Gino’s Volvo wagon was there; so was Langer’s brand-new Dodge Ram pickup; even Tommy Espinoza’s beloved ’41 Chevy was perilously crowded into door-ding territory.
Gino was waiting for him inside the door, still wearing his overcoat, sipping coffee from a mug that said
‘Jeez, it took you long enough. Come on.’ He grabbed Magozzi by the elbow and started propelling him down the hall, past the elevator.
‘We’ve got to get upstairs. Meeting starts in ten minutes.’
‘I know, I know, we’re just going to make a short stop first.’
‘Where?’ Magozzi asked.
‘Secretarial pool.’
‘We’ve got a secretarial pool?’
Gino pushed him through a doorway into a large office filled with computer stations. ‘Don’t call it that. They get really pissed, and you don’t want to piss these girls off or they won’t give you any coffee. And don’t call them “girls,” either.’
‘There’s nobody in here.’
‘They’re in the coffee room.’
‘Can I call it the coffee room?’
Gino gave an exasperated snort. ‘I hate it when you don’t get enough sleep. You get punchy and weird.’
‘I get weird, you get wired. How much coffee have you had anyway?’
‘Not enough.’ He led him toward a doorway on the back wall and poked his head in. ‘Here he is, ladies, just like I promised. Detective Leo Magozzi, the primary on these murders.’ He jerked Magozzi into the tiny room where half a dozen women of various shapes and ages smiled at him.
‘Good morning, Detective Magozzi,’ they chimed like a parochial grade-school class greeting a visiting priest.
‘Good morning, ladies.’ He forced a pleasant smile, wondering what the hell he was doing in there, trying to remember if you were allowed to call adult females ‘ladies’ anymore. The room was small, hot, and smelled like Starbucks, only better.
A tiny, fiftyish woman pushed a warm mug into his hand. ‘Here you are, Detective Magozzi.’ She smiled up at him. ‘And you come right back whenever you want a refill. Detective Rolseth told us you boys have been up all night trying to solve these terrible murders, and we want you to know how much we appreciate all your hard work.’
‘Uh, thank you.’ Magozzi smiled uncertainly. Nobody’d ever thanked him for doing his job before, and it was a little embarrassing. Because he didn’t know what else he was supposed to do, he took a sip from the mug. ‘Oh my God.’
Gino was rocking back and forth on his heels, grinning. ‘Is that incredible or what? They make it in that thing.’ He jabbed a stubby finger toward an old-fashioned glass pot perking on the hot plate. ‘I’m telling you, it’s a lost art. Walked in this morning, followed my nose, and discovered treasure. Never would have known these ladies were down here if I hadn’t been dodging that circus out front. Thank you very kindly, ladies.’
There was a round of ‘thank
‘Was that a kick or what?’ Gino asked as they weaved around empty computer stations on their way out. Every desk held photos, green plants, knickknacks; pieces of home that workers with real lives couldn’t leave behind. ‘They think we’re hot stuff. Not a bad start to a day that’s going to go down the toilet in about three seconds.’
‘What’s a primary?’ Magozzi asked him.
‘They all watch that Brit cop show on PBS – you know, the female dick who bosses around all the guys who actually have real dicks? Over there they call the lead detective the primary.’
‘We don’t have “lead” detectives or primaries or whatever.’
‘Hey, I was just trying to get you a cup of coffee. Me, I can get by on charm. Figured you needed a title.’
Chief Malcherson was waiting for them in the upstairs hallway, and if you wanted to know how bad things were, all you had to do was look at the man. Every strand of his thick white hair lay in its proper place, his pale blue shirt was rigor-mortis starched, his long face freshly shaven and composed. But his suitcoat was unbuttoned. This was a genuinely catastrophic event.
‘Morning, Chief,’ Magozzi and Gino said together.
‘You two saw the papers, the TV?’
Both detectives nodded.
‘The press ate me alive when I came in. Chewed me up, spit me out, then stomped on what was left.’
‘And you look it, sir,’ Magozzi said, eliciting a very slight smile from the chief, one of the few they would see for a long time.
‘You actually ran the gauntlet at the front door?’ Gino asked, amazed.
‘Some of us have to come in the front door, Rolseth. Otherwise people might think that we don’t have a handle on this case; that we don’t have a suspect; that we don’t have a clue who is doing these murders or how to protect our citizens; and that we’re afraid to face the press.’ He looked from one detective to the other. ‘They want to know if we’re going to close the Megamall, if we’re going to close the schools, if we’re going to put armed guards around every teacher in the city, and most of all, they want the victim profiles on the other murders in the game because they “have a responsibility to warn the public.” ’
He released a heavy sigh and shoved both hands in his trouser pockets, which was truly alarming. The suit was a wool blend work of art, and Magozzi would have bet a year’s salary that those pockets had never felt the chief’s hands before.
‘Monkeewrench took that game off the net yesterday morning, right after they read about the cemetery murder,’ Gino reminded him. ‘Nobody – except the people working this case and the Monkeewrench geeks – has seen any of the murder scenarios past number seven. So that business about seventeen more vics marked for death is a load of sensationalistic crap.’
Malcherson said sarcastically, ‘And I’m sure the public will be as relieved as we were to learn only four more of them will die, not seventeen.’ He sighed and glanced down the hallway toward the task force room. ‘We’ve got some decisions to make, and we’ve got to make them fast.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like do we shut down the Mall of America?’
‘Jesus,’ Gino muttered. ‘Even if it wasn’t a stupid idea, we don’t have the authority to do that, do we?’
‘According to the attorney general, we do. Imminent danger to the public, something like that. And
