‘That’s right. Not a .22, Detective. That is what killed the girl in the cemetery, isn’t it?’
To their credit, neither man batted an eye. Magozzi even affected nonchalance, shoving his hands in his coat pockets and looking away from her, down the street, as if her knowing the caliber of the murder weapon had no significance at all. ‘You said you had some information on that homicide.’
‘I said I might. I’m not sure.’
His right brow shifted upward a notch. ‘You might? You’re not sure? Funny. Sounded on the phone like London was burning.’
Magozzi could have sworn that none of her facial muscles moved, and yet something in her face conveyed instant disdain, as if he’d behaved very badly, and she’d expected nothing better.
‘What I might have to show you is proprietary information, Detective Magozzi, and if it isn’t relevant, I won’t show it to you at all.’
He struggled to keep his tone even. ‘Really. And just when are you going to decide if it’s relevant?’
‘I’m not. You are.’ She pulled a chain bristling with plastic cards from a deep pocket. ‘Come with me.’ She turned immediately, inserted a green plastic key card into a slot next to the door, and led the way inside.
She walked fast, boot heels clacking sharply on cement as she crossed the garage toward the elevator. Gino and Magozzi moved slower. Gino was watching a black duster flapping around long jeans-clad legs; Magozzi was looking around, seeing money in the empty space. People paid a healthy sum for secure parking places in this city, and there were at least twenty empty slots down here.
Gino nudged him with an elbow and spoke softly. ‘I’d say you two are running about neck and neck for the Miss Congeniality award.’
‘Shut up, Gino.’
‘Hey, don’t try so hard. You already got my vote.’ His eyes found the monkey stencil when they stopped in front of the elevator door. He looked at Grace with a surprised smile. ‘You’re Monkeewrench?’
She nodded.
‘No kidding. My daughter loves your games! Wait till I tell her I was here.’
She almost smiled. Magozzi waited for her face to crack and clatter in pieces to the cement floor.
‘Children’s games and educational software are our bread and butter,’ she was saying, and Magozzi frowned, trying to place the accent. Some of the consonants were soft, but the pattern of speech was East Coast rapid-fire, as if she didn’t want to talk very long and had to get the words out as quickly as possible. ‘But we’ve been working on a new project . . . that’s why I called you.’ She slipped another plastic card – a blue one this time – into a slot and the doors of the elevator slid open. She lifted the heavy inner gate effortlessly with one hand.
‘We?’ Magozzi asked as they all stepped inside.
‘I have four partners. They’re waiting upstairs.’
When the elevator ground to a halt, Grace lifted the gate onto a bright, open loft striped with sunlight. Computer stations were clustered in the center of the huge space in no apparent order, and fat black electrical cables snaked across the wooden floor. A somber group of people – three men and a heavyset woman – looked up as they entered.
‘These are my partners,’ Grace said, and Magozzi waited for the tiresome formality of introductions. Women always did that, even when you went to arrest them. Introduced you to everyone in the room while you were slapping on the cuffs, as if you’d dropped by for tea or something. But Grace MacBride surprised him, making a beeline for the desk of a tattooed, ponytailed man who looked like he belonged on Wide World of Wrestling, essentially ignoring the Ichabod Crane lookalike, the yuppie type in a polo shirt, and the incredibly fat woman who nonetheless made Magozzi’s heart thump a little harder.
‘Harley, pull up number two,’ Grace directed the muscle-bound guy in the ponytail. ‘Gentlemen?’
Magozzi and Gino joined her behind the man’s chair. It was like cozying up to a redwood. The rest of the people in the room kept their distance and their silence for the moment, which was just fine with Magozzi.
‘What are we looking at?’ He frowned over the man’s massive shoulder at a blank monitor.
‘Just wait,’ she said, and in the next instant a photograph filled the screen.
Magozzi and Gino both bent closer, squinting at a wide-angle shot of that morning’s Jane Doe when she was still draped over the angel statue in Lakewood Cemetery. The strange thing was that there were no cops in the picture, no gawkers, no crime-scene tape . . . just the body and the statue.
‘Who took this shot?’ Gino asked.
‘I did.’ The man called Harley rolled his chair to one side to give them a closer look, but neither cop needed it. They both took a step backward, eyes on Harley.
‘Looks like you got there long before we did,’ Gino said carefully.
‘Is that what this morning’s crime scene looked like?’ Grace MacBride asked.
Magozzi ignored her. It didn’t look like the crime scene. It was the crime scene. ‘The kids who found the body said they never left it until the first responders arrived,’ he said, still looking at Harley. ‘They called 911 on a cell. Which means you were there before anybody . . . with the possible exception of the killer.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Harley muttered. ‘I am not your killer, and that is not the crime scene.’
‘We were there, sir.’ Gino’s voice was tight. ‘And obviously, so were you. Now when exactly did you take that picture?’
Harley threw up his hands. ‘Christ, I don’t know. When was it, Roadrunner?’
Magozzi’s head jerked left when Ichabod Crane piped up, ‘A couple weeks ago. Anyway, I can’t remember the date . . . Oh, wait a minute. It was Columbus Day, remember, Harley? You had to loan me twenty because the banks were closed –’
‘Wait a minute.’ Magozzi interrupted. ‘Just wait a minute. You took that shot a couple weeks ago?’
‘I don’t think so.’ Gino was looking at the picture again, shaking his head.
‘We were all there,’ the heavyset woman said. ‘Two weeks ago. All except Mitch.’
‘That’s right,’ Grace said.
‘I didn’t want to be there,’ the yuppie type muttered, ‘but I remember which night it was . . .’
‘All right.’ Magozzi took a breath, looked from one to the other, his gaze finally settling on Grace. ‘Let’s hear it.’
‘It’s a staged photograph.’
‘Excuse me?’ Gino was confused, belligerent now.
‘It’s a game, darlin’.’ The big woman got up from her chair and walked over to a coffeemaker on a counter, about twenty yards of peacock blue silk swishing around her. Neither detective could take his eyes off her. ‘Serial Killer Detective, SKUD for short. Our new computer game.’
‘Perfect,’ Gino muttered. ‘A game about serial killers. How uplifting.’
‘Honey, we feed the market; we don’t create it,’ Annie drawled. ‘It’s like Clue with more dead people, that’s all. Anyway, the player catches the killer by finding the clues in a series of crime-scene photos. That one’s murder number two. Take a closer look. That’s Roadrunner up there on that angel.’
Magozzi and Gino looked at the beanpole in Lycra, then back at the picture again. They both saw it at the same time, the details they’d missed at first glance because the general image was so close. The red dress, the long blond hair, the stiletto heels . . . they were all perfect. But their Jane Doe had had tiny hands with red lacquered nails. The hands in this photo were large and sinewy and obviously male. And the feet . . . the feet were huge. As was the protruding Adam’s apple.