‘Tempting,’ Gino said, handing her a cup to use as an ashtray.
‘Thanks.’ She took a long drag and made the task force room smell the way it had in the old days. ‘Marian Amburson and Johnny Bricker were killed a few days later, and the FBI came down on us like a swarm of locusts. While the rest of us were locked up in interview rooms for damn near two days, they had Grace to themselves. That’s when they set up the trap with Libbie Herold.’
‘The FBI agent.’
‘Right. What they did was put them both in a little house off in the corner of the campus, away from the high traffic of the dorms. Easier to stake out, they said, easier to protect. Grace was scared to death. She was a kid, you know? And they were asking her to play bait for a killer. She didn’t want to do it. All she wanted was to get the hell out of there, and I think if we’d been able to get to her, we would have all taken off right then and there.’
‘What do you mean, if you’d been able to get to her?’ Gino asked.
Annie pursed her lips and frowned hard, looked out the window. ‘Even after they let the rest of us go, they wouldn’t let us see her. They said she was in “protective custody” and no one could see her; no one could talk to her. We didn’t even know where she was.’ She smiled bitterly at the memory. ‘What they were really doing, of course, was isolating her, taking away her support structure so the only ones she had left to depend on were them.’
‘And then they started hammering on how if anyone else got killed it would be on Grace’s head unless she helped them nail the killer, and pretty soon they had her believing it. So they’ve got Grace locked away in this house with a very well-armed agent, and there’s nothing to worry about, they said, because Libbie always wore a wire and help was always just outside the door.’ She paused, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. ‘But somebody fucked up, big time. Maybe Libbie’s wire didn’t work, maybe the guys staking out the house looked away at the wrong time – who knows what really happened? One morning Libbie didn’t check in when she was supposed to, and when the agents went in after them, they found Libbie’s body in the bedroom, lying in a lake of blood, her legs nearly sawed off. They found Grace in the closet, all scrunched up against a back corner. She scratched those agents up pretty good when they tried to get her out, but she didn’t say a word. Didn’t scream, didn’t cry, nothing. She was in the psych ward at Atlanta General for a week. Then we took her away.’
Gino was leaning against the wall by the door, looking down at the floor. Magozzi was watching Annie look around aimlessly, as if she’d misplaced the thread of her thought and hoped to see it somewhere in the room.
Finally she took a last drag off her cigarette and dropped it in the coffee at the bottom of the cup. ‘Anyway, that’s what happened in Atlanta.’ She slid her eyes sideways to look at Magozzi. ‘We don’t ever talk about this; not in front of Grace.’
Magozzi nodded, watched her slip her purse strap over her shoulder and head for the door. Gino stepped aside and opened it for her.
She turned back at the last minute. ‘Your computer guy, Tommy What’s-his-name.’
‘Espinoza.’
Annie nodded. ‘He’s good. He was making all the right moves trying to hack into that sealed FBI file.’
‘What makes you think he’s trying to do that?’
Annie shrugged prettily. ‘He left us in the room for a minute. And don’t blame the boy. He locked up his computer first, and it was a very sophisticated lock. Would have stopped all but about three people in the world.’
Magozzi smiled ruefully. ‘And Roadrunner’s one of them.’
‘Yes, he is. Anyway, on the off chance he ever breaks through, there’s probably a thing or two in that file that might give you pause. Might as well hear it from me first.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Another thing the FBI used to get Grace to co-operate. They were going to reopen a dismissed case on one of her friends, make a little trouble if they could.’
‘And that case was . . . ?’
Annie touched the sides of her mouth with a finger to keep her lipstick in line. ‘I stabbed a man to death the year before I entered the U.’ She looked at Gino, whose mouth had dropped open again, and gave him a smile that would have blown a less substantial man away. ‘Flies, sugar,’ she reminded him with a tap under his chin, and then she sashayed out the door.
Grace was waiting for her by the elevator. She was leaning against the wall on one shoulder, looking like a model-turned-cowboy in the long black duster, wearing one of those tiny, knowing smiles that always gave Annie the creeps.
‘You spilled your guts, didn’t you, Annie?’
‘Actually, I spilled your guts, darlin’. And a little bit of mine.’
Grace pushed away from the wall and looked down at the floor, dark hair curtaining the sides of her face. ‘If I’d thought they needed to know everything, I would have told them. I can talk about it now. I’m not going to fall to pieces.’
‘They did need to know everything, if only to keep them on track and off our backs, and there’s no reason on God’s green earth that you should ever have to talk about it. Not to them, not to anyone.’ Annie’s mouth was set in a stubborn line. ‘Damnit. I was getting to like Minneapolis. If that Tommy character gets into that file, our cover’s blown and we’re going to have to leave, start all over again.’
Grace pushed the elevator button, her eyes on the little lights over the door. ‘We did what we could. It’s a waiting game now.’
30
For a full five minutes after Annie Belinsky had left the room, Magozzi and Gino just sat in the chairs that faced the board of victim photos, saying nothing, digesting what she had told them about Atlanta.
‘What are you thinking?’ Magozzi finally asked.
Gino grunted. ‘That I should go out and shoot an FBI agent, just to make myself feel better.’
‘There were cops there, too. You can’t lay it all on the FBI.’
‘Yeah, I know. That’s even worse.’ He turned his head and looked at Magozzi. ‘It doesn’t take MacBride off the suspect list, you know. If anything, it makes her a better pick. It’d be a real kick for a killer, wouldn’t it? Off a bunch of people and have everyone feeling sorry for you, thinking you’re a victim? And there’s another thing that bothers me. If she’s not the killer and she really went through all that shit, you’d think she’d be loony tunes for the rest of her life.’
‘Apparently she was, for a while.’
‘A week. You could fake it for that long standing on your head.’
Magozzi sighed. ‘She didn’t do it, Gino.’
‘You sure you’re not doing your thinking a little south of the border?’
Magozzi leaned back in the chair and rubbed at his eyes. ‘I’m not sure I’m thinking at all. Let’s work it out.’
There was a big old blackboard in the back of the task force room that hadn’t been used in years. Everything was neater now. They used tagboards with digital photos and computer comparison charts and probability charts and graphics that would have made Disney weep. But for Gino Rolseth and Leo Magozzi, there was something about writing stuff down with your own hand that helped the thinking process.
They went to the board now and started diagramming it all out, breathing in the dusty smell of chalk, rubbing their fingers together where all the moisture had been sucked out of their skin.
‘Okay,’ Gino said, stepping back and taking a look. ‘It’s just as goddamned clear as a bell, isn’t it? About ten years ago you’ve got a series of killings at Georgia State, and the Monkeewrench people are in it up to their eyeballs. Now we’ve got a series of killings in Minneapolis and guess who’s here? You know what the odds are that any human being on the planet will be directly affected by a serial killer in his lifetime? And these people hit the jackpot twice. One of them did it. No doubt about it.’
Magozzi looked at the board for a long time. ‘Still doesn’t make sense that one of them would want to ruin their own company.’
‘Excuse me.’ Gino rolled his eyes. ‘But you gotta assume whoever dresses up a girl, hangs her on a cemetery
