Want To Play (Monkeewrench)

statue, then shoots her in the head isn’t exactly taking the elevator all the way to the top floor. Besides, every one of them’s got enough money stashed to last a lifetime. So they lose the company. So what? Ain’t like they’re gonna be homeless.’

Magozzi looked at the list of Georgia killings, then the list of Minneapolis killings, lines connecting all of them to the five people who had just been in this room. ‘What’s the motive?’

‘Hell, I don’t know. One of them doesn’t like the direction the company’s going – this game was a big jump from the little birdie cartoons they were programming for the kindergarten crowd, you know . . .’

‘Mitch Cross doesn’t seem to like the game much. He wouldn’t even go to the photo shoot in the cemetery, remember?’

‘There you go.’

‘Okay,’ Magozzi said. ‘So the game offends Cross’s sensibilities and he thinks it’s a bad business decision. But he’s outvoted, so he snaps and decides to destroy the company he helped build by killing a bunch of people he never met. Kind of an overreaction, don’t you think?’

‘He didn’t just “snap.” The guy’s a maniac. An out-of-control killer. He already offed five people back in Georgia, remember?’

‘What was his motive then?’

Gino pursed his lips and stared at the board, looking for the answer. ‘Don’t know.’

‘And if he’s that out of control how come there’s a ten-year interval between killings?’

Gino pulled at his tie, jaw jutting. ‘Don’t know that, either.’

‘Let’s plug somebody else in. How about Belinsky? She just blithely informed us that she stabbed a man to death before her freshman year in college, for Christ’s sake.’

‘Don’t try to break my heart here, Leo. You’re just going after her because I went after MacBride.’ He took a step back from the board and scrubbed at the patch of whiskers he’d missed. ‘Truth is, I don’t really like either one of them, sexist pig that I am. I’ve had it in my head right from the start that it’s a man. What about the other two? Mutt and Jeff?’

‘Nothing jumped out in what Tommy dug up on them from the last ten years. Aside from the fact that Roadrunner sees a shrink twice a week and Harley has a subscription to Soldier of Fortune.’

‘Soldier of Fortune, huh? That’s scary.’

‘He gets Architectural Digest, too. That’s scarier yet.’ Magozzi went to the front desk and brought back the file on the Monkeewrench partners Tommy Espinoza had left on his desk the night before. ‘I gave it a quick read-through, but nothing popped for me either. The short and sweet is that Harley Davidson turns out to be quite the bon vivant. Second lowest net worth, after Belinsky. Expensive taste, patron of the arts, wine connoisseur . . .’

‘You’ve gotta be kidding.’

‘See for yourself. Spends money like a drunken sailor. Has about five million in classic motorcycles stashed in the garage of his little ten-thousand-square-foot house and his dining-out expenses would pay our salaries.’

‘That’s obscene.’ Gino sat down and started pawing through the printout on Harley. ‘Holy shit. A hundred and fifteen thousand dollars on Bordeaux futures last month? What the hell is a Bordeaux future?’

‘Like corn futures, hog futures, only wine. Reads like a Robin Leach script for “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” doesn’t it?’

Gino looked up. ‘This is bizarre. But not necessarily incriminating. I was hoping for a correspondence course in serial killing, something like that.’

Magozzi smiled. ‘He’s got a Victoria’s Secret charge account that runs him a few grand a year.’

‘What?’

‘Yep.’

‘Is he wearing it or giving it away?’

‘That, Tommy couldn’t tell us. But put that together with dinners out and his romantic weekend getaways to Saint Bart’s and I’m guessing he likes the ladies.’

Gino looked thoroughly depressed. ‘Shit. And I wanted to hate this guy. How can you hate a guy like that? What about the Human Pencil?’

Magozzi pulled up a chair next to Gino. ‘Can’t tell much from the kind of records Tommy was able to access, except the shrink thing. He’s got a nice fat investment portfolio he leaves pretty much alone, a house on Nicollet Island, and nothing really interesting in the money trail. Aside from bicycle and computer stuff, and some pretty generous charitable donations, he doesn’t seem to spend any.’

‘What kind of charities?’

Magozzi shrugged. ‘Homeless shelters, domestic-abuse centers, youth-at-risk programs, stuff like that.’

‘The kind of places he probably spent a lot of time in as a kid.’

‘Probably.’

Gino sighed and closed the folder. ‘He’s kind of a sad sack, isn’t he?’

‘A sad sack with a carry permit and four registered guns.’

‘Not exactly a standout in that group. Still, he’s a misfit weirdo loner who most likely had a bad childhood, keeps to himself, and likes his guns. Is that classic, or what?’

Magozzi sighed and ran a hand through his hair. ‘Actually, it sounds like half the cops on the force.’ He stood up and went back to the blackboard. ‘The truth is we could plug in any one of the five and make them fit some psycho-in-training profile. These are strange people, Gino.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘But there’s nothing solid that says any of them are doing the killing.’ Magozzi bounced his chalk in his hands a few times, then drew an X with a circle around it beneath the list of Monkeewrench names.

‘That’s a kiss inside a hug, right?’ Gino asked.

‘That’s our other option, Mr X. Some creep fixated on Grace, did the killings in Georgia, lost track of them, or maybe went to the big house for a while on another rap. He gets out, finds them, and starts killing again.’ He cocked his head and looked at Gino. ‘It’s a possibility. We’ve got to consider it.’

‘Along with the possibility that the two series of murders aren’t related at all. That this is just some new psycho playing their stupid-ass game.’ He blew out a disgusted sigh. ‘So basically we’re nowhere, right where we’ve been all along.’

Magozzi nodded. ‘I’d say that just about sums it up.’ He tossed the chalk in the tray and brushed the white dust from his fingers. ‘And I’ll tell you something else. We’ve got to find a way to put round-the-clock tails on these people.’

‘What are we going to use, the Girl Scouts? Half the law enforcement in the state is out at the mall. We’re so short on the street I was thinking of robbing a bank myself.’

‘We’ve got to do it. Monkeewrench is in this too deep. If it’s not one of them, it’s someone with a serious beef against one or all of them. And you can bet your pension that if he’s starting to make contact, he’s feeling a need to get closer. That’s straight out of Profiling for Dummies. And e-mails aren’t going to keep him satisfied for long.’

Gino swiped a hand over the top of his thinning hair. ‘So you think he’s going to try to make personal contact soon.’

‘I think it’s a pretty safe bet.’

Detective Aaron Langer stopped by one of the huge concrete pillars that supported the parking deck above and watched two women and four kids pile out of an old Suburban. He followed them with his eyes until they made it to the walkway that led to Macy’s, wondering what the hell was wrong with people these days. You tell them there’s probably going to be a shooting at the Mall of America and what do they do? They bring their kids. Jesus.

He started walking back toward Nordstrom, head swiveling right and left, trying to watch everything. It was just after one o’clock and the parking decks were almost full. When he’d dressed for work this morning he’d imagined patrolling an enormous empty slab of concrete, so he’d worn the warm Perry Ellis overcoat his wife had gotten him for his birthday. Now the black wool was filthy from brushing up against cars that weren’t supposed to be there, that shouldn’t have been there if their owners had had half a brain. The upside was that the killer probably