Live Bait: 2 - Brossura

Tracy, P. J.

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0451214633 ISBN 13: 9780451214638

Casa editrice: Penguin Publishing Group, 2005

Riassunto

Minneapolis detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth are bored - ever since they solved the Monkeewrench case, the Twin Cities have been in a murder-free dry spell, as people no longer seem interested in killing one another. But with two brutal homicides taking place in one awful night, the crime drought ends - not with a trickle, but with an eventual torrent. Who would kill Morey Gilbert, a man without an enemy, a man who might as well have been a saint? His tiny, cranky little wife, Lily, is no help, and may even be a suspect; his estranged son, Jack, an infamous ambulance-chasing lawyer, has his own enemies; and his son-in-law, former cop Marty Pullman, is so depressed over his wife's death a year ago that he's ready to kill himself, but not Morey. The number of victims - all elderly - grows, and the city is fearful once again." The detectives' investigation threatens to uncover a series of horrendous secrets, some buried within the heart of the police department itself, blurring the lines between heroes and villains. Grace MacBride's cold-case-solving software may find the missing link - but at a terrible price.

Su questo libro

Informazioni sull?autore

P.J. Tracy is the pseudonym of mother-daughter writing duo P.J. and Traci Lambrecht, winners of the Anthony, Barry, Gumshoe, and Minnesota Book Awards. Their first four novels, Monkeewrench, Live Bait, Dead Run, and Snow Blind have become national and international bestsellers.

P.J. Lambrecht is a college dropout with one of the largest collections of sweatpants in the world. She was raised in an upper-middle class family of very nice people, and turned to writing to escape the hardships of such a life. She had her first short story published in The Saturday Evening Post when Traci was eight, still mercifully oblivious to her mother’s plans to eventually trick her into joining the family business. She has been a moderately successfully free-lance writer ever since, although she has absolutely no qualifications for such a profession, except a penchant for lying.

Traci Lambrecht spent most of her childhood riding and showing horses. She graduated with a Russian Studies major from St. Olaf College in Northfield Minnesota, where she also studied voice. Her aspirations of becoming a spy were dashed when the Cold War ended, so she instead attempted briefly and unsuccessfully to import Eastern European folk art. She began writing to finance her annoying habits of travel and singing in rock bands, and much to her mother’s relief, finally realized that the written word was her true calling. They have been writing together ever since.

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Live Bait

By P. J. Tracy

Signet Book

Copyright ©2005 P. J. Tracy
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0451214633

Chapter One

It was just after sunrise and still raining when Lily found her husband'sbody. He was lying faceup on the asphalt apron in front ofthe greenhouse, eyes and mouth open, collecting rainwater.

Even dead, he looked quite handsome in this position, gravitypulling back the loose, wrinkled skin of his face, smoothing awayeighty-four years of pain and smiles and worries.

Lily stood over him for a moment, wincing when the raindropsplopped noisily onto his eyes.

I hate eyedrops.

Morey, hold still. Stop blinking. Stop blinking, she says, while she pours chemicals into my eyes.

Hush. It's not chemicals. Natural tears, see? It says so right on the bottle.

You expect a blind man to read?

A little grain of sand in your eye and suddenly you're blind. Big tough guy. And they're not natural tears. What do they do? Go to funerals and holdlittle bottles under crying people? No, they mix chemicals together and callit natural tears. It's false advertising, is what it is. These are unnaturaltears. A little bottle of lies.

Shut up, old man.

This is the thing, Lily. Nothing should pretend to be what it's not.Everything should have a big label that says what it is so there's no confusion.Like the fertilizer we used on the bedding plants that year that killedall our ladybugs, what was it called?

Plant So Green.

Right. So it should have been called Plant So Green Ladybug So Dead.Forget the tiny print on the back you can't read. Real truth in labeling,that's what we need. This is a good rule. God should follow such a rule.

Morey!

What can I say? He made a big mistake there. Would it have been sucha problem for Him to make things look like what they are? I mean, He'sGod, right? This is something He could do. Think about it. You've got a guyat the door with this great smile and nice face and you let him in and hekills your whole family. This is God's mistake. Evil should look evil. Thenyou don't let it in.

You, of all people, should know it's not that simple.

It's exactly that simple.

Lily took a breath, then sat on her heels-a young posture for suchan old woman, but her knees were still good, still strong and flexible.She couldn't get Morey's eyes to close all the way, and with them openonly a slit, he looked sinister. It was the first thing that had frightenedLily in a very long time. She wouldn't look at them as she pushed backthe darkened silver hair the rain had plastered to his skull.

One of her fingers slipped into a hole on the side of his head and shefroze. "Oh, no," she whispered, then rose quickly, wiping her fingerson her overalls.

"I told you so, Morey," she scolded her husband one last time. "Itold you so."

Chapter Two

April in Minnesota was always unpredictable, but once every decadeor so, it got downright sadistic, fluctuating wildly between tantalizingpromises of spring and the last, angry death throes of a stubbornwinter that had no intention of going quietly.

It had been just such a year. Last week, a freak snowstorm had blusteredin on what had been the warmest April on record, scaring the hellout of the budding trees and launching statewide discussions of a massmigration to Florida.

But spring had eventually prevailed, and right now she was busyplaying kiss-and-make-up, and doing a damn fine job of it. The mercurywas pushing seventy-five, the snow-stunned flora had rallied witha shameless explosion of neon green, and best of all, the mother lodeof mosquito larvae was still percolating in the lakes and swamps.Giddy, sun-starved Minnesotans were out in force, cherishing the temporarydelusion that the state was actually habitable.

Detective Leo Magozzi was stretched out on a decrepit chaise on hisfront porch, Sunday paper in one hand, a mug of coffee in the other.He hadn't forgotten about last week's snowstorm and he was pragmaticenough to know that it wasn't too late for another, but there was nopoint in letting cynicism ruin a perfectly beautiful day. Besides, it wasa rare thing when he could practice the sloth he'd always aspired to-homicidedetectives' vacations were always contingent on murderers'vacations, and murderers seemed to be the hardest-working citizens inthe country. But for some inexplicable reason, Minneapolis was enjoyingthe longest murder-free spell in years. As his partner, Gino Rolseth,had put it so eloquently: Homicide was dead. For the past few monthsthey'd had nothing to do but work cold cases, and if they ever solved allof them, they'd be back on the beat, frisking transvestites and wishingthey'd been dentists instead of cops.

Magozzi sipped his coffee and watched as the neighborhood masochistsengaged in all manner of personal torture, huffing and puffingand sweating as they raced furiously against a climatic clock that wouldhave them locked indoors again in a few months' time. They jogged,they Rollerbladed, they ran with their dogs, and celebrated everydegree that rose on the thermometer by shedding another article ofclothing.

It was one of the things Magozzi loved most about Minnesotans.Fat, thin, muscled, or flabby, there were no self-conscious people inthis state when the weather got warm, and by the time you got a niceday like this one, most of them were half naked. Of course this was notalways a good thing, certainly not in the case of Jim, his extremely hirsutenext-door neighbor. You could never be really sure if Jim werewearing a shirt or not. He was out there now, possibly shirtless, possiblynot, hard at work preparing the flower beds that would put him inpole position for next month's Beautiful Gardens of the Twin CitiesTour. If Jim was trying to shame Magozzi into being a better homeowner,it wasn't going to work.

He looked out at his own sorry excuse for a yard-a couple of mudpuddles from last night's rain, some brave dandelions, and a few bluespruce in various stages of demise. Occasionally he had a fleeting memoryof what the place had looked like before the divorce. Flowers everywhere,Kentucky bluegrass standing at attention, and Heather out thereeach day with sharp instruments and a stern expression, frighteningplants into submission. She'd been good at frightening things into submission-ithad certainly worked on him, and he'd been armed.

He was on his second cup of coffee and almost to the sports sectionwhen a Volvo station wagon pulled into the driveway. Gino Rolsethhopped out, lugging an enormous cooler and a bag of Kingsford. Hisbelly tested the generous limits of a Tommy Bahama shirt, and beefylegs poked out from a terrible pair of plaid Bermuda shorts.

"Hey, Leo!" He lumbered up onto the porch and dropped thecooler. "I come bearing gifts of animal flesh and fermented grain."

Magozzi lifted a dark brow. "At eight o'clock in the morning? Tellme this means Angela finally kicked your sorry ass out, so I can call herand propose."

"You should be so lucky. This is charity. Angela's folks took her andthe kids to some craft thing at Maplewood Mall, so I had a free Sunday,thought I'd liven up your so-called life."

Magozzi got up and looked into the cooler. "What's a craft thing?"

"You know, those places with all the booths where people knithouses out of old grocery bags and stuff like that."

Magozzi rummaged in the cooler and pulled out a package of sickly-looking,plump, gray-white sausages. "What are these things that looklike your legs?"

"Those are uncooked brats, imported all the way from Milwaukee,you food pygmy. Where's your grill?"

Magozzi gestured toward a rusty old Weber in the corner of theporch.

Gino nudged it with his foot and it collapsed. "We're going to needduct tape."

Magozzi hefted a suspicious-looking, dark orange brick of cheese."Twelve-year cheddar? Is that legal?"

Gino grinned. "That stuff'll make you weep with joy, I promise.Got it at a great little cheese house in Door County. Somebody forgotabout a wheel in the cellar and found it twelve years later, covered in abouta foot of mold. Nirvana, my friend. Pure nirvana. It's amazing what acow and some bacteria can do."

Magozzi sniffed it and cringed. "Oh yeah. Every time I see a cow Ithink, Hey, wouldn't it be great to get some bacteria and really dosomething with this thing. Why do you have a file folder in thecooler?"

"It's a cold case."

"Very funny."

Gino lifted the grill and another leg fell off in a shower of rust. "Thisone's from ninety-four. Thought we could take a look at it later. Youknow, just to keep our hand in, in case anyone ever kills somebody inthis town again. You remember hearing anything about the Valenskycase?"

Magozzi sat down on the chaise and opened the folder. "Sort of. Theplumber, right?"

"That's the one. Shot seven times, three of them in places I don'teven want to think about."

"Plumbers charge too much."

"Tell me about it. But other than that, this guy was damn near acandidate for sainthood. Some Polack who actually made it out of thewar alive, emigrated to the good old U. S. of A., started a business,married, had three kids, deacon at his church, scout leader, the wholeAmerican dream, then bled to death on his own bathroom floor aftersomeone used him for target practice."

"Suspects?"

"Hell no. According to the reports in there, everybody loved him.Case dried up in about two seconds."

Magozzi grunted and tossed the folder on the floor. "Most guys witha free Sunday would probably find something else to do, like sit on abench at Lake Calhoun and count bikinis."

"Yeah, well, I'm a crime fighter, I have a higher purpose." Gino rana hand through his hedge of closely cropped blond hair, reconsidering."Besides, it's probably too early for bikinis."

They got the call before Magozzi had finished duct-taping the legsback on his grill. Gino had gone inside to unload the cooler, and whenhe came back out to the porch he was beaming.

"Hey, want to go see a body?"

Magozzi sat back on his heels and frowned. "You found a body inmy kitchen?"

"Nah. Phone rang while I was in there, so I picked up. Dispatch gotan honest-to-God homicide call. Uptown Nursery. The owner's wifefound him this morning by one of the greenhouses and figured it wasa heart attack, because the guy is pushing eighty-five and what elsewould drop a man that age? So she called the funeral director. He findsa bullet hole in the guy's head and calls nine-one-one."

Magozzi looked wistfully at the grill and sighed. "So what happenedto the on-duty guys who are supposed to be taking this?"

"Tinker and Peterson. Just what I wanted to know. They just took acall at the train yard over in Northeast. Found some poor bastard tiedto the tracks."

Magozzi winced.

"Nah, don't worry. Train never hit him."

"So he's okay?"

"Nope, he's dead."

Magozzi looked at him expectantly.

"Don't look at me. That's all I got." He jumped when his shirtpocket spit out an irritating, tinny version of Beethoven's Fifth.

"What is that?"

Gino pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and stabbed viciouslyat buttons half the size of his chubby fingers. "Goddamnit. Helenkeeps programming in all these weird rings 'cause she knows I got noclue how to change it."

Magozzi grinned. "That's funny."

Beethoven spoke again.

"Fourteen-year-olds are only funny when they belong to somebodyelse ... shit. I'm gonna invent one of these things with big fat buttonsand make a jillion dollars ... Hello, this is Rolseth."

Magozzi stood and brushed the rust off his hands, listened to Ginogrunt into the phone for a few seconds, then went inside to lock up. Bythe time he got back out to the porch, Gino had retrieved his gun fromthe car and was hooking it to the belt that almost held up his Bermudashorts. He looked like an armed and dangerous tourist.

"I don't suppose you've got a pair of pants that would fit me."

Magozzi just smiled at him.

"Aw, shut up. That was Langer on the phone. He and McLaren justgot called in for a suspected homicide-'suspected' meaning someonedid a little interior design with a few gallons of blood, but there's nobody. And guess what?"

"He wants us to take it?"

"Nah, Dispatch told him we were on the nursery thing, that's whyhe called. The bloody house is just a few blocks over."

Magozzi frowned. "That's a pretty decent neighborhood."

"Right. Not exactly a killing field, and all of a sudden we've got twopossibles in one day. And there's another thing. The guy who lives inthat house is-or was-also in his eighties, just like our guy."

Magozzi thought about that for a minute. "He's thinking cluster?What, that some psycho's running around killing old people?"

Gino shrugged. "He was just giving us a heads-up. Thought weshould keep in touch in case something clicks."

Magozzi sighed, looked longingly at the Weber. "So we're back inbusiness."

"Big-time." Gino paused for a moment. "You ever think there'ssomething wrong with a job where you only have something to do ifsomeone gets murdered?"

"Every day, buddy."

Chapter Three

Marty Pullman was sitting on the closed toilet lid in his downstairsbathroom, staring down the muzzle of a .357 Magnum. The roundblack hole looked very large, which worried him. Worse yet, the toiletfaced the big mirror on the sliding doors that enclosed the bathtub,and he wasn't too keen on watching his own snuff film. He thoughtabout it for a minute, then got into the bathtub and slid the doorsclosed behind him.

He smiled a little as he aimed the shower nozzle toward the back ofthe tub and turned the spray on full blast. He may have made a messof his life, but he sure as hell wasn't going to make a mess of his death.

Finally satisfied, he sat down in the tub and put the muzzle in hismouth. Water poured over his head, his clothes, his shoes.

He hesitated for just a few seconds, wondering again what, if anything,he'd done last night. Not that it would matter now, he thought,slipping his thumb through the trigger guard.

"Mr. Pullman?"

Marty froze, his thumb quivering on the trigger. Goddamn it, hewas hallucinating. He had to be. No one ever came to this house, andcertainly no one would just let himself in-except maybe a Jehovah'sWitness, which made him glad he had the gun.

"Mr. Pullman?" The male voice was louder now, closer, and hesounded young. "Are you in there, sir?" A forceful knock rattled thebathroom door in its frame.

The gun tasted terrible as he pulled it from his mouth, and he spatinto the water swirling toward the drain. "Who is it?" he shouted, tryinghis best to sound scary and aggressive.

"Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Pullman, but Mrs. Gilbert told me tobreak the door down if I had to ..."



Continues...

Excerpted from Live Baitby P. J. Tracy Copyright ©2005 by P. J. Tracy. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Dettagli dell?edizione

• Editore: Penguin Publishing Group
• Data di pubblicazione: 2005
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0451214633
• ISBN 13: 9780451214638
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 400
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile