Play To Kill

    Magozzi was already heading for Gino and Smith, jerking his thumb toward the exit while he kept talking. Whatever was in his face made both men follow him instantly without question. 'What you've said is clear, Judge. What you mean is a little murky.'

    'That will change, Detective Magozzi.'

    You sound almost sober.' He heard a dark chuckle at the other end of the line.

    'I always sound sober, and never am. I don't know the identities of all the killers, Detective Magozzi, but I suspect this man's computer will give you an excellent start in solving all the Web murders you've been working on. That Huttinger… person…' his voice was rich with contempt; 'was not part of this…'

    "Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Part of what? What the hell are you talking about?'

    'Patience, Detective. We're running out of time, but it is important to me that you know those waitresses should never have been attacked. I hope you can believe that. Now. Look at your watch. You have exactly twenty-eight minutes to make it to Woodland Hills. Twenty-nine, and I'll be dead. Thirty, and your killer will be gone. Please leave now.'

    When the line went dead, they were already halfway to the front door, badges held high to carve a path through the jam of people. 'Gino, mark the time. We've got twenty- seven and a half minutes!'

    Wild Jim flipped his cell closed and laid it on the passenger seat next to him before he got out of the car. He breathed in pond smell from the eighteenth-hole water hazard, and saw moonlight reflecting on the flag stuck in the cup.

    He started walking from the parking lot next to the clubhouse, out to the green, and felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Hole in one, he thought, remembering Jessie's last shot from the tee, miraculously skittering into that cup and breaking all the club records, because no one had ever done that before. It was a par-three hole, singled in the father-son tournament for the very first time when Wild Jim and his amazing son, Jessie, had taken home the silver trophy. Had they been talking then? He couldn't remember. What he did remember was Jessie's face when the crowd at the green let out a roar, telling the twenty-five- year-old kid he was something special.

    He'd never thought of the course being frightening; then again, he'd never been here since that last grand and glorious day of sunlight and applause.

    At night, everything changed. Trees laid down shadows on the grass in front of the moon, and men who killed for fun hid behind their trunks, waiting.

    John sat in the back of the Cadillac, listening to Magozzi's and Gino's scattered descriptions of who Wild Jim was while he stared fearfully out the side window, watching the freeway mile markers flash by at speeds that were really quite frightening. High-speed chases were normally the purview of local cops, rarely Federal agents, and it took a full ten minutes before John stopped being terrified and started getting one of those adrenaline highs he'd heard about.

    'So this man is a drunken judge kicked off the bench who happened to be near the river the night your bride was drowned, and probably saw the body.'

    'That's about it,' Gino said pleasantly. He liked highspeed chases, even when they weren't chasing anybody, and especially in the Caddie.

    'And you believe he saw the killer, why?'

    Magozzi looked manic at the wheel with the dash lights hollowing out his face and showing the tension there. 'Don't know. It's kind of hard to explain.'

    'Do we have any kind of a plan?'

    Gino turned around to look at him. 'Hell, no. Usually we make up our plans after everything's gone down, just to fill in the lines on the report, you know?'

    Magozzi swerved around a cone with a blinking light on top and nearly put them in the median. 'Goddamn road construction,' he muttered, utterly unfazed.

    John tightened his seat belt and cleared his throat. 'So basically we're going to some golf course in the middle of the night to intercept some crazed killer who's going to kill your alcoholic ex-judge.'

    Gino punched the recline button and smiled. 'Well, what do you know. We have a plan after all. Check your load, Smith. You're going to have to hide behind a tree and maybe shoot somebody.'

    'I've never actually shot at a real person.'

    'Yeah, well, there's a first time for everything.'

    Wild Jim Bukowski, fierce believer in law and justice, padded across the short-clipped green in the pair of maroon Uggs he'd taken to wearing when he'd exited the world. He flinched at the sound of a cricket in the grass, and nearly collapsed at the mating call of a male frog in the water hazard. He shouldn't have been afraid. This was what he had wanted, what he had planned, and now at the end of his journey he felt the rapid heartbeat of fear and wondered if he could find the courage to sustain him.

    There was a flutter of leaves in the carefully tended woodland surrounding the green. Wind, or man? He froze close to the flag and heard the pounding of his own heart. There was a breeze, and it whispered terror in the leaves, making his eyes sharpen against the moonlight. It was too soon.

    Gino wasn't reclining in his seat anymore, but sitting bolt upright, frantically trying to program the Caddie's GPS to find an alternate route that wasn't closed for construction. Despite the air conditioning, sweat was beading on his forehead. The ninety-mile-an-hour whiz on the freeway had ended abruptly when they'd taken the Hiawatha exit. The highway was down to one lane, jammed with the vomit of cars from the Twins game and the detritus of construction that was so constant and ongoing that Minnesotans called it a season.

    'Damnit!' Magozzi stood on the brakes and screeched to a halt about a millimeter away from the big bumper of the SUV in front of them. Smith felt the shoulder belt bite into his flesh and his heart jump to his throat. The bubble light strobed ineffectively, and there was no way to get around the congestion without taking out a few orange-and-white barrels. 'How much time, Gino?'

    'Fifteen minutes, and there's goddamn construction all the way down Hiawatha. Shit, we're never going to make it. Next street, take a right, it switches back to…'

    Magozzi veered the wheel hard to the right and stomped on the accelerator, pushing the Caddie down the shoulder, and through an obstacle course of cones and barrels, some of which died for the cause.

    'Jesus, Leo! Half the pavement is gone…'

    There was a sickening crunch as the Caddie bottomed out on a broken piece of pavement. Smith saw sparks fly out from the undercarriage like a swarm of fireflies, but Magozzi kept pushing.

    'Time?'

    Gino checked the Caddie's digital readout. God, he loved this car. 'Thirteen minutes.' He glanced to his right and saw the light-rail train keeping pace with them, heading for their intersection. 'You gotta beat that train to the intersection, Leo. If we stop, it's all over.'

    'How fast do they go?'

    'I don't know. Thirty, thirty-five. You're going thirty-six, Leo. That's cutting it a little close.'

    Yeah, well, I've got a thousand red taillights in front of me, and this fucking Cadillac is not a monster truck, so make a suggestion.'

    Gino exhaled sharply.

    Wild Jim scurried from the eighteenth green into the woodland border and found the tree he had selected before. It was old and broad, with soft bark to cradle an old man's rickety back. He sat down with his legs splayed and leaned against it, trying to make his heart slow down because, goddamn, it was beating so hard anyone could hear it. He laid the rifle with its night scope across his knee, emptied the chamber, and waited.