Want To Play (Monkeewrench)

agree that he literally drew us a cyber map that routed us there, when in all likelihood, it was actually sent from somewhere very nearby.’

Tommy Espinoza stood and introduced himself then, and asked a series of technical questions that might as well have been in Greek, as far as Magozzi was concerned. MacBride and her clan were duly impressed with Tommy’s knowledge and after five minutes of Q & A, they were deep in the midst of techno-geek bonding.

It was Gino who finally interrupted, making no attempt to keep the irritation out of his voice. ‘Look, I’m just tickled pink you’re all hitting it off, but can you postpone your little lovefest until you tell the rest of us where the hell that e-mail supposedly came from?’

Magozzi nodded. ‘Tommy, after we wrap up here, you can take them to an interview room and get a full briefing on the computer angle.’

Tommy gave Magozzi a chagrined smile. ‘Sorry, Leo, Gino.’

‘It came from a private Catholic school in upstate New York,’ Grace said.

‘Saint Peter’s School of the Holy Cross, Cardiff, New York,’ Roadrunner put in.

The room was silent.

‘We were hoping that the location would have some significance to you and the investigation, because it certainly has no significance to any of us.’ Grace reached deep into the pocket of her duster, pulled out a folded slip of white notebook paper, and passed it to Magozzi. ‘Here’s the school’s phone number. You won’t find him there, but it might be a clue, intentional or otherwise.’

Magozzi unfolded the paper and stared at the precise, draftsman-quality script that could only belong to Grace MacBride. ‘We’ll check it out.’

‘You know,’ Louise offered, ‘the first vic was a seminary student. Maybe he went there.’

‘Maybe,’ Magozzi said. ‘Or maybe we can match a name with someone from the registration list.’ It was such a long shot he almost laughed out loud, but he figured that would be bad for morale. Or whatever was left of it. Things were just never that easy.

‘If he continues to make contact,’ Grace went on, ‘the chances of tracing him back to his real location improve. The mistake most hackers make is the arrogant belief that nobody plays the game better, that there isn’t a chance they’ll get caught. So they keep hacking into the same sites longer than they should, tempting fate, leaving little cyber footprints, and eventually someone finds them and follows them. It doesn’t matter how good you are. There’s always, always somebody better.’ She looked at Roadrunner, who nodded, and then at Tommy, who smiled at her.

It was the same with serial killers, Magozzi thought. They often started to feel invincible when they literally got away with murder. They got arrogant, maybe a little bored, so they upped the stakes, left more clues. A lot of serial homicides were solved for that very reason.

Grace sighed. ‘You will have our full cooperation on this, of course.’ The offer was genuine, but the tone in which she said it made it clear that her cooperation was a reluctant consortium with the enemy. ‘We’ll interface with Detective Espinoza on the technical aspects, and until we receive a new message, we’ll continue to attempt to trace back to the current message’s true origin.’

‘And you’ll keep us informed of any new messages you receive,’ Gino said. It was a command, not a question.

‘Absolutely.’

‘You get an e-mail at four A.M., I want a call by four-oh-one. Can we route your e-mail to Tommy so he has instantaneous access to any message you might receive?’

Grace nodded at Tommy. ‘We’ll work something out. We’ll set up an on-line link. I’ll give you my password.’

‘Wait a minute,’ Magozzi interrupted. ‘Your password? Are you saying these e- mails were sent to you, personally?’

Grace MacBride hesitated only a fraction of a second. ‘Yes.’

‘Not the company.’

‘Generally, to the company. Specifically directed to my mailbox.’

Louise Washington sucked air in through her teeth. ‘Whoa. You have any enemies, Ms MacBride?’

‘Outside of this room? No, I don’t think so.’

Her crew smiled at that, even Mitch Cross. So did a few of the detectives.

Chief Malcherson gave her one of his political nice smiles. ‘You have no enemies in this room, Ms MacBride. No enemies in this department. If our questioning seems a bit curt, it’s only because we’re under a great deal of pressure with this case. I’m sure you understand.’

‘I understand perfectly. Yesterday the police were told that a murder was going to take place on a paddleboat. It wasn’t a very large area to cover, and in spite of that, you were unable to either trap the killer or save the life of an innocent man. I imagine that kind of abysmal failure brings a great deal of pressure to bear on your department.’

Now she had enemies in the room, Magozzi thought. For a moment everyone was silent; every pair of eyes riveted hatefully on Grace MacBride. Gino, predictably, was the one to fire an answering shot.

‘Yeah, well, while you’re passing out black marks, you just might want to lay a couple on yourselves. If we’re still pretending that one of you isn’t the killer, then there’s somebody else out there following this piece-of-crap game you psychos dreamed up like a goddamned blueprint, and I don’t care how you try to justify it so you can sleep at night, the fact is that we’ve cleaned up three bodies in two days that would not have been there if it weren’t for you people.’

‘Not “you people,” Detective Rolseth,’ Grace replied quietly. ‘Me. The game was my idea.’

If there was remorse in there, Magozzi didn’t hear it. But there was something almost plaintive in what she said next.

‘Did you close the Mall of America?’ Her eyes darted from face to face, but no one answered. She looked at Chief Malcherson. ‘You have to close it. You have to.’

A lot of the detectives shifted in their seats, maybe a little uncomfortable to find themselves on the same side as the professed cop-hater.

‘That wasn’t a viable option,’ the chief said, and it was clear that he was uncomfortable, too.

‘You did it before,’ Grace pressed him. ‘When you thought that escaped prisoner went into the mall, you evacuated everyone, shut it down in a matter of minutes.’

Chief Malcherson sighed. ‘We didn’t think he went into the mall. The police in pursuit saw him enter the ramps. He posed an obvious and immediate threat. This is a very different situation.’

Langer stood up abruptly. ‘Speaking of the mall . . .’

Magozzi blessed him silently and jerked a thumb toward the door. ‘Right. You and Peterson, go. McLaren, you’ve got Steamboat Parker’s. Louise, when you finish with Daniels’s boss, check in with the team canvassing the bus station. The rest of you are on the registration list. Check in with Freedman; he’ll be making the street assignments.’

‘Detective?’ Roadrunner took one gangly step forward and fluttered a sheaf of papers. ‘We cleaned up the registration list a little. Thought it might help.’

Magozzi looked at Grace, who returned his gaze coldly. Perfect, he thought. I sneak around stealing her fingerprints, and she gives me the help I ask for. ‘This is Roadrunner, everyone. What do you mean, you cleaned it up?’

‘Well . . . you know . . .’ His bony shoulders twitched in a nervous shrug. ‘We just made sure there was a legitimate address for everyone who signed on.’

‘Everyone?’ Gino asked. ‘All five hundred eighty-some?’

‘Well . . . yeah . . .’ And now all Roadrunner’s body parts started moving at once. His eyes shifted from side to side, the corners of his mouth tightened in a guilty smile, his head bobbed, and his shoulders kept going up and down. Pinocchio manned by a mad puppeteer. ‘We had a lot of orders from people who signed on. And I mean a lot. Almost four hundred. We cross-checked the mailing addresses against their credit card records, and cross-checked those addresses against . . . um . . . other sources . . .’