Free Shoot to Thrill by P.J. Tracy Page B

gowns wrapped in plastic, hanging from a sagging dowel. And in shocking contrast, amidst all the finery, were two brown-and-yellow-polyester Stop-and-Go uniforms, neatly hung and ready for service. “Christ, look at this,” he said. “It’s like Cinderella’s closet. Char girl by day, princess by night. This guy was leading a double life. And he had more wigs than Cher.”
    “It gets weirder,” Magozzi said from the living room as he stared up at a framed diploma that hung on the wall. “Alan Sommers graduated cum laude from Billy Mitchell Law back in 1989. How the hell do you get from there to here?”
    Gino joined Magozzi in the living room. “Huh. That’s a damn big fall. But remember what Camilla said? That he lost somebody close? She kind of implied that that was what sent him over the edge.”
    He started rummaging in the apartment’s few drawers and cabinets but didn’t turn up anything except the mundane scraps of day-to-day life. “Man, this is the sorriest place I’ve ever tossed. There’s nothing here, not even a can of Coke in the fridge. It’s like Alan Sommers wasn’t even a real person, just a cardboard mock-up.”
    “I think the real Alan Sommers is in that closet.”
    “Christ, you’re going to have to put me on suicide watch if I stay here much longer. I hate poking through dead people’s stuff. Reminds me of having to clean out my grandpa’s house after he died.”
    Magozzi nodded. “There’s nothing here. Let’s get to the jail and bribe a boy in blue to let us see Wild Jim before they let him out in the morning.”
    “I got nothing to bribe a jailer with.”
    “Give him some vitamin C.”
    “You get that I have had no sleep, right, Leo? Zero, nada, not even a Salvador Dali nap.”
    “I get it. Join the club.”
    Magozzi pulled in at an angle in front of the Hennepin County Jail.
    “And you also understand that it’s three o’clock in the morning.”
    “I do.”
    “So here’s the thing. My eyes are fried eggs, my brain cells are crisp around the edges, and at the moment I’m about three levels down from any drunk coming off a high, let alone an ex-judge.”
    Magozzi put the car in park and rubbed his eyes. “No choice. The golden time is wearing off on Alan Sommers. We already lost a day thinking he was an accidental, more time finding out he left the club alone, and Wild Jim is the last lead. We’ve gotta milk it.”
    During visiting hours, Hennepin County Jail kept at full ballast with a cross section of society that would never mingle in the real world. There was always the predictable, en masse scum, coming to chitchat with significant-other scums; then there was the regular meat-and-potatoes crowd, always a little shell-shocked by having to visit an errant friend or family member in lockup; and, less frequently, the dressed-to-kill cocktail crowd, sporting major attitude and pissed as hell that their lover or spouse had gotten a DUI after drinking too much champagne at an important charity event. It made for excellent sport if you were into people-watching, but as a cop, you got over that brand of voyeurism your first or second day on the job.
    At this hour the lobby was calm, the sign-in deputy was bored, and Magozzi and Gino were relieved. Efficiency was at its peak, and Wild Jim was escorted immediately to the standard Plexiglas booth that was blurry with scratches and fog from the breath of loved ones declaring their heart’s desire through a quarter-inch of plastic.
    The judge looked perfectly lucid, eyes as sharp as they always had been on the bench, blood alcohol notwithstanding. He plunked down on the steel chair across from Magozzi and Gino with a gracious thanks to the jailer who’d escorted him, then lasered in on the both of them without prelude.
    “I remember you, Magozzi. You were in front of me twice. As I recall, you were trying to lock up a couple craven sociopaths that your wife at the time wanted desperately to put back on the streets, for