Play To Kill

Give him a call.'

    While Magozzi was trying to reach Smith, Detective Johnny McLaren ambled in and set a big box of donuts on Gino's desk. 'Here's your cliche of the day.'

    Gino could literally feel his pupils dilate. 'Are you kidding me, Johnny? Are you angling for beatification, or what?'

    'I won the donut raffle this week. Thought I'd share the wealth.'

    'What donut raffle, and why the hell don't I know about it?'

    'Because you never come to my poker games. The biggest loser of the week has to buy for the biggest winner.'

    Gino reverently lifted the lid of the box and selected a glazed disk of heaven. 'You are my hero.'

    McLaren eyed the stacks of paper on Gino's and Magozzi's desks. 'Jesus. That's a Muir's Forest worth of pulp - were there just fifty new homicides that I didn't hear about?'

    'Just our one river bride, but it might be connected to a bunch of other ones all across the country.'

    'No way.'

    Yes, way. It could be huge. We're even working with the Feds and Monkeewrench on this.'

    Johnny's red brows peaked into twin Vs. 'Sounds interesting. A hell of a lot more interesting than the Litde Mogadishu drive-by Tinker and I pulled yesterday. We solved that homicide in about one second.'

    'Oh yeah?'

    Yeah. The perp was a shit driver - couldn't shoot and steer at the same time, so he wrapped his car around a telephone pole. When the first responders yanked him out through the window, he was still holding the gun.'

    'That's priceless.'

    Magozzi finally hung up the phone, greeted Johnny, then turned to Gino. 'Smith's tied up and can't help us right now. They've got a hot lead on the Wisconsin guy.'

    'Excellent.'

    'Who's Smith? Who's the Wisconsin guy?' McLaren asked.

    Gino gestured to the files on their desks. 'All part of this mess. You want in on it? We could use an extra pair of eyes big time.'

    McLaren shrugged. 'Sure, why not? Our docket's clear right now. I'm officially on vacation anyhow, so maybe the Chief will throw me some overtime.'

    Gino pulled a chair for McLaren, and he and Magozzi gave him a quick overview and two of the murder files.

    Magozzi said, 'Right now we're just looking for a link between the victims.'

    'Cool. Cop work. I can do that.'

    Write down every name you see, and anything else you think might be interesting.'

    An hour later Johnny finished with the first file and spent five minutes leaning back in his chair with his mouth open, trying to hit his eyes with eye drops.

    Gino snatched one of his pages out of the saline shower. 'Jeez, McLaren, take the rainstorm to the can, will you?'

    Johnny wiped at the water on his cheeks. 'I hate these damn things. Could somebody tell me why you can never get this crap in your eyes unless you're standing in front of a mirror? I know where my eyes are, and even if I didn't, I'm looking straight up at Mr. Nozzle and still can't hit the target.'

    Magozzi reached for his phone when it rang. Your eyes were closed, McLaren.' 'No.'

    'I was watching. It's a reflex. You see the drop coming down, you blink at the last second. Gino, take him to the can and staple his lids open.'

    'No problem.'

    'I heard that, Magozzi.' Grace's voice came over the phone, making him smile. 'And I like the new greeting. A lot more creative than saying 'Homicide, Detective Magozzi.' Whose lids are you stapling open?'

    'McLaren's.'

    'What if I'd been a customer?'

    'I would have said you'd misdialed and gotten the mayor's office.' He heard a soft chuckle, which was really weird. 'Stop laughing, Grace. You're scaring me.'

    'I'm happy. We got him, Magozzi. Clinton Huttinger, aka Teacher of the Year, aka attacker in both Medford, Oregon, and Wisconsin. Medford PD just arrested him at the airport.'

    'That's great news, Grace. Really great. Any chance he's connected to any of the other murders?'

    'None. The Medford cops checked on that, and he's got solid alibis in public places for every one of the others, including your bride. Sorry, Magozzi. But he knew the pre-post code, so his computer may tell us something. We'll let you know.'

    'I need a date, Grace.'

    Silence for a few seconds. 'Leave your cell on, Magozzi. It might be late, it might not be at all.'

Chapter Twenty-six

    John Smith was at the window table in the Monkeewrench office, looking out through the leaves of a tall tree with a trunk as big around as his Great Aunt Harriet five years after she discovered fast food and Twinkies. He wondered how old the tree was. Decades, certainly; maybe centuries, or however long trees lived. Maybe this one had witnessed the migrations of the Ojibwa and the Sioux, the growing pains of a city that kept changing its identity, depending on which industry or immigrant population was dominant, or maybe Harley had planted it last year. John didn't know, and would never have wondered about such a thing three days ago. It disturbed him enormously that such questions were starting to occur to him, and he blamed Monkeewrench for putting him at a table where a tree constantly distracted him.

    Why did he care how old it was? Such musings were the provenance of people who wore funny wide shoes and hung wooden beads around their necks. If you couldn't kill it or pick it and throw it in a stewpot for supper, nature's bounty had never held any interest for him. For the most part, it was messy, sometimes dangerous, and always annoying. Especially insects. They'd been bad in the often humid climate of Washington, D.C., but in Minnesota they were enough to drive a man insane. The one and only time in his career he'd been tempted to draw his weapon was when a swarm of gnats had descended on him in the motel parking lot.

    And what was so wrong about killing all the insects? Who cared if the frogs died with them? The only thing frogs were good for was keeping the insect population down, and clearly they were lousy at that. So if the insects were gone, the frogs could either find another job or go extinct. That was the way of the world… and, come to think of it, a pretty good description of the Bureau's mandatory retirement policy.

    His cell phone lay forgotten on the table next to him, still warm from almost an hour of calls informing those who needed to know that Clinton Huttinger had been arrested in Oregon and was now under lock and key. A surprisingly big part of John understood that he had been a very small part of capturing this particular psycho (making the world safe for waitresses everywhere!), and every time he passed the news along in that dignified, self-effacing manner that the classes in Quantico had drilled into him, he felt a little flutter in his stomach, a sense of that satisfaction his father had talked about when he locked a bad guy into the back cage of his squad, and the feeling was like a narcotic. Too bad it had happened for the first time so near the end of his law enforcement career.

    'Penny for your thoughts, man.' Harley's big mitt came down on his shoulder, making him jump. Funny how such a big man could move so quietly.

    John looked up at him. 'Murder, mayhem, chaos - the usual.'

    'Holy crap, John, I think you may have come close to a rib-tickler there. Are you okay?'

    'Actually, I am very well, thank you. Passing on the news that Clinton Huttinger is off the streets was very… satisfying.'

    Harley set his bulk down in a chair and stretched out his legs. 'We all kicked some bad ass there, didn't we? So that's who you've been talking to all this time? The big guns in D.C.?'

    'Yes.'