29

Gino was mobbed the minute he pushed through the door to Homicide. Langer, McLaren, Gloria, and Peterson all moved toward him like a pack of slobbering puppies. A lesser man, he thought, might have been fearful. ‘Lars, what are you doing here?’ he asked Detective Peterson. ‘I thought they bumped you over to Narc until Tinker got back from vacation.’

Peterson was zipper thin and had just a little more color than most of the corpses they’d seen in the last few days. ‘Just for yesterday. And you know how I spent it? Sitting in a methadone clinic waiting for Ray the Mouth to show up. God knows what I caught there…’

Gloria pushed Peterson aside with a gentle nudge of her hip that nearly dropped him. ‘Yadda yadda yadda, come on, Rolseth, spit it out.’

‘What?’

‘Are you kidding?’ McLaren asked. He was wearing a navy-and-white houndstooth check jacket that looked like an eye test. ‘You’ve been all over the news all morning, and you don’t even call in. So what happened at Gilbert’s place? Where’s Magozzi?’

‘Leo’s dropping off some stuff for Ballistics, and nothing happened at Gilbert’s.’

‘No dead people?’

‘No dead people. Looks like Gilbert killed his wife’s car emptying a clip at a phantom assassin. That’s about it.’

Peterson’s bony shoulders sagged beneath his white shirt. He looked sadly down at his empty desk, probably dreaming of homicides, the bloodthirsty bastard. ‘Sounded like Waco on the news.’

Gloria spun in a swirl of rainbow silk, cornrow beads clattering. ‘I told you fools there was nothing to it. You flick a Bic in Wayzata, everybody gets all worked up. Peterson, you’ve got about three minutes to sign off with Narc before Harrison leaves, or you belong to them.’

‘Oh shit.’ Peterson beat a path to the door.

‘So nothing broke for you?’ Langer asked Gino as they all drifted back toward their desks.

‘Don’t ask. Another twenty steps forward and we’ll be back to square one. How about your case?’

Langer shook his head and stabbed at a thick pile of printouts on the edge of his desk. ‘This is everything we could get on the six Interpol victims. Dull as dirt, most of them, ordinary people living ordinary lives.’

‘But Interpol had them pegged as contract hits, right?’

‘So they say, but they’re the unlikeliest targets I ever came across.’

‘Just like all the people getting bumped off around here.’

Langer raised an eyebrow. ‘Good point. But we still can’t come up with a connection to Fischer, except for the gun.’

‘And the Feds are nipping at Malcherson’s ass,’ McLaren said miserably. ‘The way they figure it, we’re a couple of cow tippers who can’t see shit in a sewer, so they’ll just take our case, solve it on their lunch hour, and get all the glory. Which means Langer and I are probably going to be giving safety lectures at some grade school tomorrow.’

‘Huh.’ Gino made a feeble attempt at tucking in his shirt. ‘What’s Malcherson say?’

Langer shrugged. ‘We’ve got until the end of the day to come up with something, then he’s letting them in. And to tell you the truth, I’m not so sure it isn’t a good idea. We’re pretty much at a dead end.’

Gino shook his head. ‘If they want it, they’ve got something you don’t have.’

‘Probably.’

Magozzi came into the office like a stiff breeze, moving swiftly down the aisle with his cell phone pressed to his ear, listening hard. He greeted everyone with a wave as he passed, thumbing Gino toward their desks in the back.

While Magozzi finished his call, Gino pawed through his desk drawer looking for food. He was examining a soggy, lint-covered cough drop, trying to decide if it was edible, when Magozzi said, ‘Thanks, Dave,’ into the phone and flipped the cover closed.

‘Dave? As in Ballistic Dave?’

‘That’s the one. He had a little news. Rose Kleber and Ben Schuler were killed with the same 9-mm.’

‘Oh, yippy-ki-ay, our first solid connection, and please, God, tell me it was the 9-mm Wayzata took off Jack Gilbert so I can throw his ass in jail.’

‘Sorry. Dave did a quick test-fire. It wasn’t Jack’s gun.’

‘Crap.’

‘He also scoped all the slugs from Gilbert’s place. All of them came from Jack’s gun, except one.’

‘Whoa.’ Gino leaned back and laced his fingers over his belly. ‘So somebody really was trying to kill him.’

Maggozi nodded. ‘They dug the odd slug from the inside of the roof, about an inch in from the back of the wife’s SUV. Jack said he was standing back by the gate, remember? And that slug came from the same gun that killed Kleber and Schuler.’

Gino thought about that for two seconds, said, ‘Oh, for chrissake,’ then got up and grabbed his handcuffs from the desktop.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m going to go arrest Gilbert, that’s what I’m doing.’

‘For what? Getting shot at?’

‘Material witness, protective custody, public drunkenness, I don’t care. I just want him in a cell. That goddamn stupid son of a bitch knew it was coming, and that means he knew why it was coming, and maybe even who the shooter is. And does he tell us? No. He just sits around with his mouth shut while other people are getting killed. Goddamnit, why do they put these handcuff clips way in the back I can never reach the damn things…’

‘Gino. Calm down.’

Gino snorted out a furious exhale and looked at his partner. ‘What?’

‘We can’t arrest him.’

‘Please.’

‘He didn’t actually witness anything, so he’s not a material witness. Protective custody is voluntary, and as for the public drunkenness…’

‘Yeah, yeah, I know.’ Gino flopped back down into his chair, thoroughly disspirited. ‘We could go over there and question him again, though. Maybe pick up a cattle prod on the way, because without one, that guy is not going to tell us a thing.’

‘Call Marty. Tell him what we know, give him a little more ammunition. And have him tell Lily, too. I gave her a nudge this morning. Maybe between the two of them they can break him down.’

Gino reached for the phone. ‘We’re going to have to put a patrol out at the nursery if Jack’s staying there.’

‘Right. You take care of that, I’ll call Chief Boyd in Wayzata and have him put a car on the wife, just in case.’

Magozzi’s cell burped as he was ending his call with Chief Boyd. ‘Hey, Grace.’

‘Call me back on a landline. I hate cells.’

He blinked when she hung up abruptly, but called her back on the desk phone. ‘Why didn’t you call the office number in the first place if you hate cells so much?’

‘Because I have to go through Gloria, that’s why. Gloria hates me.’

‘What are you talking about? Of course she doesn’t.’

Grace actually laughed out loud, there and gone in a flash, then she was serious again. ‘The program is starting to kick out some things. They may not be important. I’m not sure.’

‘I know for an absolute fact that Gloria doesn’t hate you.’

Gino looked up from his phone call with hiked eyebrows, but Magozzi ignored him.

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Magozzi, it’s certainly more important than that,’ Grace said impatiently. ‘Listen, I wasn’t getting any matches on expenditures for your three victims through the regular channels, so I expanded the search parameters a little.’

‘Oh dear. What does that mean exactly?’

‘I pulled everything for all three of them. Bank records, credit cards, investment portfolios, tax returns…’

Magozzi dropped his head in his hand and covered his eyes while the list of Grace’s computer crimes went on and on.

‘Magozzi? Are you still there?’

‘I’m here. Maybe this would be a good time to mention that Chief Malcherson asked me to remind you to access only information in the public domain when you’re helping us out.’

‘Okay. Here’s your public domain information. Morey Gilbert and Rose Kleber shopped at the same grocery store.’