Play To Kill

    Magozzi was sitting at his desk with the morning's fourth mug of coffee, staring out the window at the steady rain and the swarm of colorful umbrellas with legs that were fleeing the streets and disappearing into the downtown office buildings. The downpour had started early, just after dawn, riding in on a massive bank of black clouds that had settled into an indefinite stall over the Twin Cities. At the moment, it was making glacial progress eastward, drenching the center of the state with triple the expected rainfall. Assuming that a storm system of such biblical proportions would be easy to spot on Doppler, it seemed odd to him that the meteorologists hadn't given any advance warning on the news last night. Hell, maybe this was an act of God. Or a portent of doom. Or both.

    He hadn't slept much after he'd safely delivered a tipsy Chelsea Thomas to her uptown Minneapolis house last night. Probably a combination of too much beer, too much grease, and too much conversation about things that were going on in the world that could drive anyone with a soul to consider suicide. Or perhaps it was the unexpected hug, warm and genuine, that she'd given him in the car before dashing up her front walk and letting herself in with a final, grandiose wave goodbye…

    'Leo? Hello?'

    Gino was suddenly standing next to him, looking wet and bedraggled.

    'Oh… morning, Gino.'

    'Are you even awake?'

    'I'm not sure.'

    'Good. Me either. What's with this rain bullshit, anyhow?' He shucked off his blazer, exposing a pristine white shirt and intact tie, but the front of his pants were visibly wet, the cuffs still dripping water over his sodden loafers and onto the floor.

    'What the hell happened to you?'

    'Oh, I was so hoping you'd ask. Angela needed the car today because the Volvo's in the shop - again - so she dropped me off at the corner. And guess what? The storm drains are backed up, there's a foot of standing water in the streets, and I'm the lucky guy who was on the curb when some cowboy in an SUV decided to run a yellow light at thirty-five miles an hour. My toes feel like stewed prunes and I'm not even going to take a stab at describing what cold, wet undershorts are doing to other parts of my anatomy right now.'

    'I appreciate that more than you know.'

    Gino sank into his chair and ran a hand through the blond hedge of his buzzcut like a squeegee. A mist of water rained down onto his desk blotter. 'So where is everybody?'

    'McLaren and Tinker caught a call at a rental on Blaisdell; landlord and tenant got into it and one of them ended up at the bottom of the basement stairs with his head in pieces…'

    'Man, you're just daisies in the morning, Leo, you know that?'

    … almost everybody else is working the 'suspicious death' in Little Mogadishu.'

    'Ah. I heard about that one on the news on the way in. Seven bullet holes in the kid, and right away someone labels it suspicious.'

    'That's the one. And Gloria's at the dentist.'

    Gloria handled the phones, the files, and ran roughshod over all the detectives in Homicide. She was almost ebony- black, lived on fast food and flamboyant clothing, and tortured Detective Johnny McLaren's Jack Sprat frame with every single swing of her generous hips. She was also one of the few people in the world who could out-sass Gino, and leave him happy about it, which was a rare and wondrous gift.

    'Damn. Gloria was the only bright spot I expected in this day. What was she wearing?'

    'That tiger-striped thing she always wears to the dentist. Root canal this time, and she's going to be mean as a wet cat when she gets back.'

    Gino grunted. 'Not that anybody'll be able to tell the difference. And what happened to you last night? Tried calling you at ten, you weren't home, and not to put too fine a point on it, but you look like crap. Almost hungover.'

    'Bad sleep and not much of it.'

    'I get that. I had nonstop nightmares about nuking everything with a circuit board in my house.' His eyes drifted to the huge, cellophane-wrapped wicker basket that monopolized the entirety of Magozzi's desktop. 'Is that a fruit basket?'

    'Yeah.'

    'What's up with that?'

    'It's from Judge Jim.'

    Gino frowned. You busted the guy's balls last night and he sends you a fruit basket? That doesn't make any sense.'

    'Maybe he doesn't get many visitors.'

    'Well, shit. Give me a banana. So how was your meeting with the profiler last night?'

    'Interesting. Depressing. Scary.' Magozzi ripped open the fruit basket, tossed a banana to Gino, and grabbed an apple for himself.

    Yeah? Did he tell you anything you didn't already know?'

    'Kind of. And it's a she, by the way.'

    Gino waited patiently for further edification while he peeled his banana, and when it didn't come, he leaned forward on his elbows. You're a million miles away, Leo. So who exactly is this 'she,' and are you going to tell me what she said that has you so doped up, or is it rated X?'

    'It's rated G. But she had some insights.'

    'Like?'

    'Like the Web is normalizing deviant behavior.'

    'Is there anybody in the world with a Ph.D. who actually speaks English?'

    'She does, and everything she said made a scary kind of sense.'

    'Oh, man. She's either one good shrink, or she's a part- time supermodel, if she's got you jumping on the psychobabble wagon train.'

    Magozzi gave him a warning glance. 'Do you want to hear this or not?'

    'Sorry. Go for it.'

    'There have always been the natural born killers, and there always will be, and of course they're going to use the Web, just like everybody else in the world.'

    'Well, yeah, we kind of figured that out already.'

    'But, there are also a lot of people on the cusp - disgruntled, twisted, deviant, whatever - who might normally never act on their urges in the real world because there's no catalyst to push them to the next level. And some of these types actually understand that what they're feeling is antisocial and wrong. Enter the Web - a safe, fantasy forum to communicate with like-minded people. 'Hey, Joe, you fantasize about raping and killing women? Me too!' Get a blog with fifty or a hundred or a thousand guys like Joe talking to one another, and you've got yourself a whole new culture with its own morals and code of conduct.'

    Gino grimaced like he'd just swallowed a bug. 'Christ.'

    'It's a support structure. And her assumption is, it can escalate into reality from there. How many of the school shootings in the last few years would have happened if Columbine hadn't happened first?'

    'So what we might have is a bunch of amoral whack jobs telling the other amoral whack jobs out there that it's A-okay to murder, and then they all start believing it for real?'

    'Yeah. Like that.'

    'Sounds like Lord of the Flies and a twelve-step program for homicide all rolled into one.'

    'That's what she's afraid is happening. That the Web is actually enabling these monsters and the community is getting stronger.'

    Gino put down his half-eaten banana and stared at it.

    Long ago he'd come to the point in his life where he believed he'd seen it and heard it all, the worst of the worst that humanity had to offer. But if this were really happening, he'd been pretty goddamned wrong about that. 'How can she sleep at night with all that crap running through her head? I mean, I've come up with some pretty crazy scenarios over the years, but even I couldn't dream that shit up. How the hell are we supposed to keep up with something like this?'