sitting on the front steps under the porch light in a fuzzy black robe, elbows on her knees, chin in her hands like a little girl. So daring, so brave, as if there weren't people in her quiet neighborhood who would jump out and kill her.
She fed him chicken piccata, whatever the hell that was, gave him a glass of wine, then tucked him into the big bed upstairs and held him until he fell asleep.
'Magozzi.' He heard her voice in his right ear, felt the movement of her breath stirring his hair. 'Ten minutes till breakfast.'
She had all his favorites at the kitchen table: orange juice, yogurt, and bran cereal. 'Gee, Grace, you shouldn't have.'
She made a cute little snorting sound. 'Eat it. It's good for you. Besides, I haven't been home long enough to shop this week. While you're eating, you can listen to the judge's tape.'
He eyed the little recorder she'd placed on the table between them. 'I don't think I can take any of Wild Jim's monologues on an empty stomach.'
'He recorded his conversation with the murderer last night.'
By the time the tape clicked off, Magozzi had eaten half the yogurt, which was disgusting, two bites of bran cereal, which looked like bunny turds and probably tasted like them, and was gulping juice to wash it all down. 'Half of that tape is drunken bullshit. Alan Sommers didn't kill his son. His son committed suicide, probably because he knew his father better than we did and couldn't stand him.'
Grace studied him for a moment. 'Alan Sommers gave the judge's son the HIV virus. Jessie shot himself when he developed full-blown AIDS.'
Magozzi closed his eyes.
'Sommers was apparently golden on the meds, but seven other of his partners died, both before and after he passed on his little present to Jessie. The judge thought of him as a mass murderer, of sorts; one that couldn't be prosecuted.'
Where are you getting this stuff?'
'He wrote a daily journal on his computer. He wasn't that bad a man, Magozzi. He sat down on the riverbank with his gun every night for a year, trying to kill Alan Sommers, but he couldn't make himself do it.'
Magozzi scraped back his chair and headed for the coffeemaker. 'So he put Alan on a hit list and had someone else do his dirty work. It's still murder. Don't fall for his poor-me crap, Grace. And don't forget there were six other people on that list.'
Grace held out her mug to give him something to do. 'He had no idea there were real killers on that site. He thought they were a bunch of twisted, juvenile blowhards pretending they were tough guys. In a way, he was making fun of them, holding up a mirror to what losers they were. So he taunted them with a list of people that he'd hated for years because they got light or no sentences for absolutely horrible crimes. He'd been either the prosecutor or the sitting judge on every case, and it almost killed him when the system he believed in failed.'
'Still murder,' Magozzi grumbled, refusing to look at her for almost a full second.
'It wasn't a hit list, Magozzi. It was a hate list posted by a despairing, ranting drunk.'
'We should have found that connection in the victim files.'
'Did you read the trial transcripts?'
'Trial transcripts are at the end of the files, and they're hundreds of pages. The box thing interrupted us before we got that far. We should have started with them. I should have known that, goddamnit.'
Grace started clearing the table. 'It wouldn't have made any difference, Magozzi. The murders had all happened by then.'
'Not quite.'
She stopped in mid-stride on her way to the sink, holding his cereal bowl in her hand. 'You liked him,' she said without turning around.
'No. I did not. What I liked was that cereal. Bring it back.'
Grace set the bowl in the sink and then did the weirdest thing. She walked over and bent to kiss his cheek. No passion, no pity, just a connection. It shouldn't have made Magozzi feel better, but it did. 'I have something to tell you, Magozzi.'
He stood on the front stoop of Grace's house, hands shoved in his pants pockets, thinking how strange it was that he wasn't reacting. Funny. You wait and wait for things to change; for people to change. You don't work at it, mind you; you just wish and wait and only tell yourself in secret that it will never happen. And then suddenly, right out of the blue, it does.
How about that.
Chapter Forty-four
John was standing in the doorway of the Big Boy's Room, thinking of what a comedown his own bedroom and tiny bathroom in D.C. were going to be tonight.
He could hear the soft murmur of voices and went downstairs after a final, longing look at the bedroom.
When he exited the elevator, Annie, Grace, and Roadrunner were standing in the foyer next to Harley.
Annie batted her eyelashes at him – he was certain of it this time around – and in her sweet sugary drawl bid him good morning. She was wearing a sunny yellow suit with an elaborate, veiled hat, like the kind women wore to the Kentucky Derby. In her hand she had a beautifully wrapped gift dressed up with a green satin ribbon.
'Good morning, everybody. What a wonderful surprise to see you all again.'
Roadrunner was grinning. 'We wouldn't let you go without a send-off, John.' He nudged Annie like an excited kid. 'Give it to him.'
Annie extended the gift. 'This is from all of us. And please don't say something stupid like 'You shouldn't have' or I'll have to slap you silly.'
Smith cocked a brow at her. 'You shouldn't have.'
Harley laughed. You're getting a funny bone, Smith. Good for you.' 'Open it up, John,' Grace said with a smile.
He took his time unwrapping it, as if that would somehow delay his plane and his imminent departure.
'Jesus, John, you must be a nightmare on Christmas morning,' Harley gave him a good-natured needle. 'You're going to miss your flight if you don't kick it into gear.'
He chuckled and pulled the lid off the box. Inside was a stack of printed pages and a tiny cassette.
'Those are from Magozzi and Gino,' Grace told him. 'That's a copy of the judge's tape from the golf course, and all the entries from his computer journal.'
John smiled. 'Sharing information,' he murmured.
'That was the deal.'
'And what's this?' He pulled a single sheet of paper from the bottom of the box. John read a short list of names he didn't recognize.
'Oh, nothing much, really,' Annie said. 'Just the names of your other murderers, is all.'
John slid his eyes to look at Harley, who was rocking back on his heels, hands shoved deep in his pockets, like a little boy hiding frogs. 'Where did you get this, Harley?' he asked quietly.
The hands came out of the pockets and opened, frogless. 'It was the damnedest thing. We got an anonymous tip this morning, took a few minutes to check out the names, and it looks like it might be the real thing. Thought you might like to take them back to D.C. and follow up.'
'An anonymous tip.'
'That's right. An e-mail right out of the blue.'
'I suppose it was untraceable.' 'It was.'
Roadrunner said, 'Kind of a cool thing to hand over to your bosses if it turns out legit, huh?'
John looked from one face to another. No one was smiling. 'Very cool,' he said finally. 'Very cool indeed.'
