Free Live Bait by P. J. Tracy Page B

because she was terribly afraid that she might have forgotten to lock the back door, and even more afraid to get up and look.
    She sat frozen on the sofa, a pathetic old woman deluding herself into believing that if she remained perfectly still, if she didn’t breathe, whatever was coming would simply pass her by. In the next instant, she heard the back screen door open, then close with a click, and still, she couldn’t move.
    The heavy inside door closed, sucking a little air from the room.
    Rose never turned to look at him, so he walked into her line of sight and waited for her eyes to rise to his. When they did, he pulled a large handgun from his jacket pocket and pointed it at her.
    Oh, God. It wasn’t going to pass her by; this time it was going to kill her.
    In that dreadful moment of realization, she became young and strong and fearless again, and she vaulted upward at the precise moment the bullet left the muzzle, ruining his killing shot. Fire tore into her stomach instead of her heart and Rose looked down to see a blossom of red spreading across the front of her little-old-lady dress.
    ‘Goddamnit,’ he said, and shot her again.

10
    Chief Malcherson was one of those tall, well-built Swedes with thick white hair, lake-ice eyes that made him look mean, and a hangdog face that made him look mournful. Sort of like a homicidal basset hound. He was wearing pinstripes this morning – for him, a daring foray into edgy fashion.
    ‘I like the suit,’ Gino pronounced, flopping into a chair next to Magozzi. Magozzi shot him a warning look, but Gino was oblivious. ‘It’s real zippy. Kind of a mob look.’
    Malcherson froze in the middle of taking off his suit jacket and closed his eyes. ‘Not exactly the kind of image I was hoping to project, Rolseth.’
    ‘I meant it in a good way.’
    ‘That’s the frightening part.’ Malcherson settled behind his desk and tapped one manicured finger on a stack of two bright red file folders. He always kept his copies of open homicides in red folders, probably because this ultraconservative man found the color almost as offensive as the crime. Magozzi hadn’t seen one on his boss’s desk in over four months. ‘The media would like to know why our senior citizens are being tortured and murdered.’
    Magozzi’s brows shot up. ‘Someone actually said that?’
    ‘An intern from Channel Ten.’ Malcherson waved a pink phone message slip.
    Gino snorted. ‘That is such bullshit. This is what happens when you do your job and you don’t have a homicide for a while. The minute two guys get offed in one night some idiot in the media tries to scare the hell out of the city by talking spree, or serial killer, or some such Hollywood crap. Besides, only one of them was tortured, and it wasn’t ours. Morey Gilbert was dead before he hit the ground, and he didn’t have a mark on him except for that one little bullet hole.’
    ‘So there’s no reason at all to suspect a connection between the two murders.’
    Magozzi shrugged. ‘If there is one, we can’t see it yet. They were both old, they lived in the same neighborhood. That’s about it. Arlen Fischer’s name didn’t ring any bells with the Gilbert family or employees; neither did his description, and I’m guessing they’d remember a three-hundred-pound ninety-year-old man.’
    ‘Good. We can quash the serial rumor, then. We’re going to get enough pressure on the Gilbert murder the way it is. The desk logged over three hundred calls last night and this morning.’
    Magozzi raised his brows. The number was unreal. Twenty calls on a case were enough to make the brass nervous; three hundred could break careers. ‘On Gilbert, or the train track guy?’
    ‘The “train track guy” has a name,’ Malcherson admonished him. ‘Arlen Fischer. Most of the calls on that case were from the media, and the stack is pretty slim compared to Gilbert’s, which is amazing when you consider the horrendous nature of Fischer’s murder.