Play To Kill

    'It's not,' Magozzi said.

    Smith looked troubled. 'Last we spoke, you mentioned a Minnesota connection with the seven male murder victims, which seemed like a promising detail.'

    'We're still working that angle,' Gino said. 'Nothing so far.'

    'But it's quite a coincidence, you must admit.'

    'You're telling me. Minnesota is suddenly up to its eyeballs in Web-related homicide, and now this crap with the boxes.' He shoved his hands in his pockets and regarded his shoes for a moment - an innocent pair of physical ticks that meant nothing to anybody except Magozzi, who knew his partner's pre-attack body language better than his own.

    'And as long as we're on the topic of coincidences,' Gino continued, as Magozzi knew he would; 'here's another one. A week ago, you rode into town for a cyber-crime sting before you even knew about the Minnesota connection. Or did you know?'

    John blinked a few times, genuinely blindsided, in Magozzi's opinion. 'We absolutely did not know. We never even considered the fact that the Web murders could be related until Monkeewrench found the pre-posts. And, frankly, just because they were all pre-posted doesn't mean they're related. As I'm sure Dr. Thomas mentioned to you, there is a great potential for deviant communities to form and escalate on the Web. The fact that seven of the victims have ties to this state is really the most compelling evidence for a connection we have so far.'

    Gino frowned. 'So maybe we've got a deviant community escalating right here.'

    'It's a possibility.'

    'So why did you pick Minneapolis for a base of operations if you didn't know anything before you got here?' Magozzi picked up Gino's pass.

    Smith almost smiled. 'You two are an impressive interrogation team.'

    Gino puffed out his chest a little. 'Thank you.'

    Smith nodded graciously. 'We're here because Monkeewrench is here. Regardless of the competency of our Cyber Crimes Division, we felt it critical to utilize all resources available for this investigation. And I think we can all agree that there is nobody better at what they do than Monkeewrench. We did offer to set them up with an office in D.C. for this assignment, but they preferred to work from their home office. We agreed to accommodate them.'

    'So this really is just a coincidence?' Gino asked.

    Smith frowned. Apparently he was as uncomfortable with the word coincidence as everybody else in law enforcement. 'It appears that way.'

    Grace, Annie, and Harley all pulled up chairs next to Roadrunner and watched as he loaded the clips from the surveillance footage onto a dedicated computer that ran the facial-recognition software.

    'Are you going to limit Web-search parameters, buddy?' Harley asked.

    'No.' He turned around in his chair. 'Should I?'

    'It's gonna take forever if you don't. Start out small and match against a few social networking sites first.'

    'Okay. I'll start the search with MySpace, YouTube, and Facebook. They're the biggies.'

    Annie, who was looking particularly fetching in a floral- printed silk caftan today, gave Harley a rare compliment. 'That's the most sensible thing that's come out of your mouth in days.'

    Harley waggled his eyebrows at her. 'Everything out of my mouth is sensible. You're just finally getting it, doll face.'

    'Keep the dream alive, Harley,' she snipped back. 'Sophistry becomes you. And don't ever call me doll face again, or else I'll…'

    Grace tuned out the ongoing tete-a-tete between Harley and Annie and let her eyes drift up to the wall- mounted television they rarely watched but had kept on since the box fiasco had started. Every channel, on network and cable, was still running nonstop coverage of Minneapolis in chaos. How long would it take before this scenario replayed itself in other cities across the country, and across the planet? Probably not long. Global interconnectedness had seemed like such a great idea at its inception, but like all powerful things, it had its dark side - a seriously big dark side - and they were on the frontlines.

    Annie had apparently burned out her war of words with Harley, because she was watching the television now, too, her lips pursed in a glittery pink pout that matched the shimmering silk poppies on her dress. 'This is just plain craziness. Look at those freeways - plumb full of nice people who are scared to death to stay in their own city. That's not right, and we need to do something about it.'

    Grace sighed. 'The only real solution is to change human nature, and that we can't do. The Web might be inciting bad behavior and providing a global audience, but in the end, we're still talking about bad people, not bad technology.'

    'The thing that drives me crazy is there are too goddamned many places on the Web where the bad guys can hide,' Harley grumbled. 'If we took away their hiding places, maybe they'd think twice.'

    Roadrunner spun his chair around. 'I just launched the facial-recognition software. Now it's a waiting game.' He looked at Harley. 'And there's nothing we can do about their hiding places, Harley.'

    'Oh yeah?' Harley grumbled. 'There's lots we can do, if we have the cojones to do it.'

    Roadrunner rolled his eyes. 'Oh yeah? Like what? We've been tap-dancing in and out of these hostile servers and sites for the past week. The people we're looking for know how to stay stealth, and every single post that predicted crimes has been bounced around the globe through anonymity software, botnets, networks of firewalls, you name it. There is such a thing as untraceable.'

    'I know that, dipshit, I worked with you on all the traces we tried. My point is, we need to cut off the head of the hydra. There are foreign servers we know about that are protecting bad guys seven ways to Sunday and won't grant access to law enforcement. So what are we supposed to do, play nice? Follow international laws that promote cyber crime? Hell no. We shut 'em down. Every time we find a foreign server tag associated with a crime? Bang! Denial-of-service attack. Viruses. Whatever. And we'll just keep shutting them down the minute they go back on-line.'

    Annie gaped at him. 'Sweet Jesus, Harley, you've lost your mind. We can't do that.'

    'Why not?'

    'First of all, it would probably incite an international incident. Second of all, we would surely end up in those orange jumpsuits.'

    Roadrunner was smirking at Harley. 'Besides, dipshit, do you know how many servers there are in this country alone, let alone the world? You might as well try to empty the Pacific Ocean with a teaspoon.'

    Harley scowled back. 'Okay, so maybe shutting down servers isn't the answer. My point is, our lawbreaking has always been in proportion with whatever crime we're trying to solve. But the crime is escalating, and so we have to, too. Laws don't keep up with technology, and those laws deserve to be broken.'

    'I agree with you, Harley,' Grace said quietly. 'The problem is, there will always be criminals out there, whether or not we shut down servers or compromise the anonymity networks that protect them. All we can do is try to keep up, and help the cops make an example of the criminals we do catch.'

    'Pretty ironic that four people who repeatedly break the law spend so much time fighting crime,' Annie said, scrutinizing a chip in her new manicure.

    'Did I hear something about breaking laws?' Gino's voice preceded him into the room, along with Magozzi and Smith.

    Harley chuckled. 'Just international law. Nothing you need to worry about, buddy.'

    'How's it going with the surveillance footage?' Magozzi addressed the room, but his eyes were fixed on Grace.

    'Hi, Magozzi. The program is running now.'

    'Pull up some chairs, darlings,' Annie drawled. 'We've got some time to kill.'

    Ten minutes later, Roadrunner let out a whoop and Harley started laughing so hard, he doubled over, and everybody in the room descended on Roadrunner's computer.

    'What is it?'

    Harley took a few seconds to catch his breath. 'We got a match,' he pointed to the enhanced picture of