has been determined. You know that.'
'Indeed I do. But I also suspect that the cause of death has already been established by the very efficient Dr. Rambachan, and that your continued interest in my memory of that night indicates that the death was homicide, not accident.'
Gino actually smiled. 'You know what, Judge? You need a hobby. Bowling, maybe. Or bingo.'
The judge smiled. 'Was your victim murdered before he ended up in the water?'
Magozzi and Gino exchanged a long glance that only the two of them could read. 'No,' Magozzi finally said. 'He drowned all right. Somebody held him under the water and watched him die.'
'How do you know that?'
'We saw it.'
'What do you mean, you saw it?'
'Whoever did it took video footage of the murder and posted it on the Web.'
The judge looked skeptical. 'Detectives, I spend a lot of time on the computer for lack of anything better to do, and I've seen some pretty disturbing things. But I doubt that any of them are real.'
'Trust us, it's real,' Gino said.
'How can you be sure?'
Magozzi and Gino shared a look, and the judge chuckled. 'Ah, yes, never share details of an ongoing case with civilians, and especially not with suspects. Officially, I am both, but in actuality, I am neither. I'm also bored, I miss the law, and you have piqued my curiosity. I can assure you that anything you tell me will be kept in the strictest confidence. I wasn't disbarred because I was unethical, I was disbarred because I got one too many DUIs.'
Gino shrugged at Magozzi. 'This stuff is basically all public knowledge anyhow. Hell, it's all over the Web. Doesn't get much more public than that.'
'Come on, Detectives. Give a bored, worthless old drunk a puzzle to work on. It might even bring me back from the dead.'
Magozzi blew out a sigh. 'Well, it turns out our drowning is part of a bigger case.'
The bleary eyes sharpened instantly. 'How very intriguing. And what is this bigger case?'
'Suddenly, murder films are turning up all over the Internet, from all over the country. And the reason we know they're real is because every single murder was advertised in advance, in detail, right in chat room postings for anybody to see, and there's a body to match every post.'
'Including your drowning.'
'That's the first one we found.'
The judge's ruddy, booze-hound complexion turned pale. 'Good Lord. How many?'
'Eight. That we know of.'
'Eight?'
'Well, actually seven dead. The eighth one happened last night in Medford, Oregon, but the woman survived. She's in ICU now.'
The judge shook his head, then looked down into his glass and was quiet for such a long time, Magozzi and Gino started to wonder if he'd passed out sitting up. 'My God. The world has lost its collective mind,' he finally said.
'I'd say so.'
'You've got a true maniac on your hands, Detectives.'
'Actually, we think there's more than one killer.'
He blinked. 'This is simply overwhelming, even to me, and I lost faith in humanity long ago. How on earth did you go from a simple drowning two nights ago to a nationwide murder conspiracy?'
'The Feds are involved, and they brought in Monkeewrench. They're the ones who found the pre-posts that match with the victims – they all follow the same format. They seem harmless out of context, but the pattern suggests these guys are communicating. Showing off their trophies.'
The judge was thinking hard, and he seemed truly present for the first time since they'd met him. He'd even forgotten about his drink. 'But surely, either Cyber Crimes or Monkeewrench will ultimately be able to trace these posts or these films, and then you'll have your perpetrator. Or perpetrators.'
'Whoever's doing this is good. They know how to hide. So far, everything's been untraceable. So there you go, Judge. Is that enough of a puzzle for you?'
The judge cocked a brow. 'I don't know much about computers, but I do know quite a bit about human nature. Our species is reliable in one way and one way only – eventually, we all make mistakes. I would guess your killers are living on borrowed time.'
Magozzi's cell phone started playing AC/DC, and he excused himself and picked up. 'Grace.' He listened for a few moments, then pulled a notebook and pen out of his pocket and started scrawling.
'What is it?' Gino asked when he hung up, not at all liking the expression his partner was wearing.
'Monkeewrench just found a ninth pre-post. 'City of Big Cheese, pink polyester, near steer,' and they think Wisconsin's a possibility. They want us to call Sheriff Halloran over there and see if he can't help pinpoint a location, because they're running out of time to maybe prevent the murder.'
The judge dropped his glass and it shattered on the floor, spilling amber liquid over white marble. 'I used to have a cabin in Door County,' he said, his voice and expression numb. 'Interstate 94 to Wisconsin Highway 10. There's a diner just before that turnoff called the Litde Steer, and thirty miles north of that is the glass semi-trailer that holds what was then the largest block of cheese in the world, exhibited at the World's Fair.'
Chapter Nineteen
Harley was pacing the office like a manic gorilla, pounding a beefy fist into his palm, boots banging the wooden floor. 'Okay. City of Big Cheese. That's in Wisconsin for sure, right?'
'Absolutely positively,' Annie agreed.
Agent John Smith had his elbows braced on the table, his hands pushing through his nowhere FBI haircut. 'California produces more cheese per year than Wisconsin.'
Annie dismissed that silly notion with a fluff of her black bob. 'That is not true. I have been to Wisconsin, that place is practically made of cheese, and they produce more than any other state. I read that on a placemat in a diner over there.'
Smith shrugged. 'Point of pride for the Dairyland. California passed them in tonnage some time ago, but they're still in denial.'
'Crap,' Roadrunner grumbled from his station. 'I have almost three million sites on the search for Big Cheese. Give me some more parameters.'
'Add California and Wisconsin,' Harley said. 'Otherwise all we've got in the post is 'pink polyester' and 'near steer.'
Annie snapped her fingers. 'What did I tell you, Agent Smith? Near steer. Who has more cows than Wisconsin?'
'California. And Texas. And probably Oklahoma.'
'That is an out-and-out lie.'
'It might be.'
Annie raised her brows. That had sounded suspiciously like a tease, which stunned her. In her experience, teasing a woman was directly related to testosterone, but Agent Smith looked like someone had wrung every bit of that out of him long ago. She opened her mouth to tell him the further edification that in the one Wisconsin diner she'd been in, the waitresses had worn pink-polyester ugly suits, but the phone rang before she could utter a syllable.
'Yes?' Grace snatched her receiver, listened, said, 'Got it,' and hung up. She looked over at Annie. 'Magozzi has a possible location. Interstate 94 and Wisconsin Highway 10, a diner called the Litde Steer.'
'Shit!' Harley bellowed. 'What county is that? Who's the sheriff?'
'I'm on it!' Roadrunner shouted back.
Agent John Smith put his elbows on the table and his head in his hands. They were going to lose another
