Gino licked his lips at the feast before him, then looked up at the man, apparently undaunted by his size. ‘Jesus, buddy, are those knife cuts all over your face?’
Malcherson and Magozzi both tensed. Gino was happily oblivious.
‘Yeah,’ the rumble came back. ‘Bunch of guys jumped me with shivs.’
‘Bummer. Inside?’
‘Yep. You?’
Gino stabbed an accordian of potato circles and stuffed them into his mouth. ‘Not yet. So far I’m on the other team… Omigod, these fries are amazing. Leo, try the fries, then ask this guy to marry you.’
The hulking brute beamed, and assuming that meant he wasn’t going to kill them all, Malcherson examined his fork, took a small bite of potato, then blinked. ‘Oh my. Fresh rosemary. Wonderful.’
‘Thanks. Nobody in this neighborhood ever notices the rosemary. You want ketchup?’
By tacit agreement, none of them spoke for a few moments while they ate. Magozzi and Malcherson had both managed to clear about a third of their plates, then pushed them away simultaneously.
‘You aren’t going to eat that?’ Gino asked, chasing the last skittering bit of sausage across his own barren platter. ‘Damn shame to waste it. Besides, I wouldn’t want to offend the guy.’
‘Good point.’ Malcherson nudged his plate in Gino’s direction, then glanced at his watch. ‘If you two really believe Morey Gilbert, Rose Kleber, and Ben Schuler were connected beyond their common experience as concentration camp survivors, I assume you’re examining their records, phone bills, bank statements, that sort of thing.’
Well, yes, they were, Magozzi thought; but not exactly through the proper channels. ‘We’re handling that, sir.’
‘Really. Handling it how? I haven’t seen a warrant cross my desk -’ He stopped abruptly and looked at Magozzi. ‘Never mind. Don’t answer that.’
Malcherson knew full well about Magozzi’s continuing relationship with Grace MacBride, who could hack her way into any supposedly secure database. He also knew that his best detective – a man who wouldn’t loosen his tie on the job because it violated department dress code – had developed a troubling impatience with privacy laws and civil rights and department procedure when he thought lives were at stake. Warrants took time. Checking records took time, and the temptation to take shortcuts was enormous for a cop who thought he was fighting the clock to find a killer. Malcherson understood the temptation as well as anyone, but also understood that once you started breaking the rules, it was hard to stop, and one of the most dangerous things in the world was an officer of the law who thought he was above it. ‘Detective Magozzi…’
‘We’re trying to move pretty fast on this, Chief,’ Magozzi interrupted. ‘We don’t know if there are other targets out there.’
‘I know that.’
‘Old, defenseless, terrified targets,’ Gino inserted around a mouthful of eggs. ‘Cookie-baking grandmas like Rose Kleber.’
‘Detective Magozzi,’ Malcherson repeated in a tone that quieted both his detectives. ‘If you intend to ask Grace MacBride and her associates to use the program that worked so well finding links on our cold cases, remind her to access only that information in the public domain.’
‘I’ll do that, sir. But we aren’t just waiting for something in the records to pop. Like we said in the report, we think Jack Gilbert knows something, and we’re going to hit him hard today.’
‘Then I wish you all the luck in the world. As far as the press and the public are concerned, it looks like this killer has a very specific demographic target group, and those people are starting to panic.’ He folded his hands together and looked down at his shiny gold watch. ‘Do you recall the dire predictions the press was making when the legislature passed the new conceal-and-carry law?’
Gino snorted. ‘Oh yeah. They were singing the dark song. Millions of Minnesotans packing, gunning each other down in the streets. And you know what? I didn’t hear a word on the news when the new applications fizzled down to near nothing.’
Malcherson’s eyes slid to Gino. ‘Yesterday alone there were three hundred seventy-three new applications to carry a concealed weapon. That was in Hennepin County. Our county, gentlemen. Three hundred of those applications were filed by people over the age of sixty-five.’
‘Holy shit… sir.’
Malcherson flinched at the vulgarity. ‘That was before Ben Schuler’s murder was reported. I expect the numbers could go even higher today, especially now that we’ve earned national attention. CNN headlined it last night; the other networks will have it by the evening news, and that, gentlemen, is really going to stir the pot.’
Gino threw up his hands. ‘What’s the matter with these people? If I was a national reporter sifting the wire reports I’d jump on the old guy who was tortured and tied to a train track.’
Malcherson sighed. ‘It was one murder. Sensational, yes, but there are dozens of sensationalistic murders every day in this country. You, on the other hand, are working three murders, and even if no one says “serial” aloud, they’re thinking it. That in itself is enough to garner national attention. Add to it the incomprehensible horror of someone murdering elderly survivors of the death camps, and the eyes of the country will be on you.’
Magozzi felt a tickle deep inside his head, as if little brain cells were standing up and waving their arms, trying to get his attention. He closed his eyes and frowned hard, concentrating.
‘What is it, Detective?’ Malcherson asked.
Magozzi opened his eyes and looked at the chief. ‘I don’t know. It’ll come to me.’
26
By the time Magozzi and Gino left Chief Malcherson at the diner, the sun had risen high into a hazy, almost-white sky. The air was soupy and oppressive, and the mercury was already courting the eighty-degree mark. When they turned west on 394, they could see the haze starting to gel on the horizon, stirring the sky.
‘There she comes,’ Gino remarked, looking up from his pointless fiddling with the buttons on the car’s useless air conditioner. ‘Canadian cold front is finally dropping, and when that baby gets here, we’re going to have the clash of the Titans.’
‘They said sometime tonight,’ Magozzi said. ‘The whole state’s under a tornado watch.’
‘How weird is that? Two weeks ago I was shoveling five inches of snow off the driveway; now we’re poaching in our own sweat watching the sky for funnel clouds.’
‘Welcome to Minnesota.’
Twenty minutes later Magozzi was guiding the unmarked along the scenic, curving streets of a wooded development that tried hard to look like Minnesota wilderness. It had all the elements – enormous stands of mature trees, the bubbling rush of creeks fed by snowmelt and spring rains – but nature had not groomed these places. This was what some community planner thought nature was supposed to look like.
There was no fallen brush between the trees, no canted branches to mark the passage of the last storm, and if one leaf had dared to fall on the unmarked tar last autumn, it had long since been swept away.
There were no lots in this part of Wayzata. Here, everyone had ‘acreage,’ and only occasionally could you catch a glimpse of the enormous homes set far back from the street, artfully concealed by strategic landscaping.
Gino was looking out the window with a deeply suspicious expression. ‘Okay, now this is just not right. There are no potholes in this road. It’s spring in Minnesota, for chrissake. You’re supposed to have potholes. And the damn tar looks polished. You get a load of that house we just passed on the hill back there?’
Magozzi shook his head, eyes on the road as he negotiated a hairpin turn that followed the natural course of what was clearly a very confused creek. ‘There has to be another way to Jack Gilbert’s house. No way he could drive this street drunk.’