flying, and no sense at all when your demons were armed and dangerous and probably insane.
‘The back of your neck is really red, Magozzi.’
He turned and looked at her, struggling to keep his voice even. ‘There is absolutely no reason for you to go there. Your program can crunch all the information from here.’
‘Magozzi. The five investigations have generated thousands of pages of paper and hundreds of tips, with new information coming in every day, and not a scrap of it is on computer. It would take a month just to transmit everything.’
‘So take a month.’
She shook her head once, sending waves of black hair swinging over her shoulders. It was an intentional distraction, he thought. He shouldn’t have told her he was superficial. ‘We don’t have that kind of time. This guy takes a woman every seven months, like clockwork. It’s been six months since the last one.’
Magozzi thought about slamming his fist down on the table. It seemed like such an Italian thing to do, but he just couldn’t see himself doing it. Apparently the gesticulation gene had passed him by on its hereditary journey. ‘You want to tell me how the hell you managed to find a police department in this country that isn’t computerized?’
Grace put her chin in her hand and looked at him. ‘You have no idea how many of those are out there. This one is a four-man office, one of those is the chief, and even he does double duty on patrol.’
Damnit, he hated it when she had good answers for every question. ‘Okay, then where are the State boys? The FBI? The Texas Rangers? Whoever the hell fills in down there when they’ve got a serial going?’
Grace made a face. ‘The Feds and the State were in it big-time at the beginning, but technically, all the cases are still classified as missing persons, not homicides. No bodies, no crime scenes, not a lot of press interest after it came out that most of the victims weren’t exactly model citizens. Most of them had a history – runaways, drug users, prostitutes – so they went down on the priority list real fast.’
Magozzi felt the first stab of hope. ‘So if there are no bodies, what makes them so certain they have a series of homicides at all? Runaways run, after all. It’s what they do. Maybe they’re still all out there.’
Grace was getting impatient. ‘That’s exactly the stone wall the chief is running into. When these kinds of women disappear and no one finds a body right away, the State and the Feds back off because everybody’s thinking, gee, they just probably went somewhere. But the chief believes he has a serial operating in his town, and he convinced us. The last victim wasn’t a user, a prostitute, or a runaway, although the State boys wrote it off that way. She was eighteen years old, driving to a grocery less than two miles away to pick up some ice cream for her father. She was the chief’s daughter, Magozzi. The man is looking for his kid, and no one will help him.’
And with that sentence, Magozzi felt himself lose the battle before it ever really began. Grace wasn’t running toward a murderer; she was leaving on a crusade. He closed his eyes and sighed.
‘This is the kind of case where the new software could really make a difference.’
Magozzi tried not to look miserable, because he had a vague idea that misery probably wasn’t macho. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t known this day was coming. Grace and her three partners in computer wizardry had been knocking themselves out since last October, working on the new program, getting ready to take it on the road, and now that the news was out, Arizona was just the beginning. This thing was really going to snowball.
He’d seen the article in a couple of the recent issues of law enforcement magazines that hit just about every department in the country, and couldn’t imagine a single cop who wouldn’t jump all over it, especially since the service wouldn’t cost them a dime.
The FLEE program was
‘The back of your neck is really red, Magozzi.’
He turned and looked at her, struggling to keep his voice even. ‘There is absolutely no reason for you to go there. Your program can crunch all the information from here.’
‘Magozzi. The five investigations have generated thousands of pages of paper and hundreds of tips, with new information coming in every day, and not a scrap of it is on computer. It would take a month just to transmit everything.’
‘So take a month.’
She shook her head once, sending waves of black hair swinging over her shoulders. It was an intentional distraction, he thought. He shouldn’t have told her he was superficial. ‘We don’t have that kind of time. This guy takes a woman every seven months, like clockwork. It’s been six months since the last one.’
Magozzi thought about slamming his fist down on the table. It seemed like such an Italian thing to do, but he just couldn’t see himself doing it. Apparently the gesticulation gene had passed him by on its hereditary journey. ‘You want to tell me how the hell you managed to find a police department in this country that isn’t computerized?’
Grace put her chin in her hand and looked at him. ‘You have no idea how many of those are out there. This one is a four-man office, one of those is the chief, and even he does double duty on patrol.’
Damnit, he hated it when she had good answers for every question. ‘Okay, then where are the State boys? The FBI? The Texas Rangers? Whoever the hell fills in down there when they’ve got a serial going?’
Grace made a face. ‘The Feds and the State were in it big-time at the beginning, but technically, all the cases are still classified as missing persons, not homicides. No bodies, no crime scenes, not a lot of press interest after it came out that most of the victims weren’t exactly model citizens. Most of them had a history – runaways, drug users, prostitutes – so they went down on the priority list real fast.’
Magozzi felt the first stab of hope. ‘So if there are no bodies, what makes them so certain they have a series of homicides at all? Runaways run, after all. It’s what they do. Maybe they’re still all out there.’
Grace was getting impatient. ‘That’s exactly the stone wall the chief is running into. When these kinds of women disappear and no one finds a body right away, the State and the Feds back off because everybody’s thinking, gee, they just probably went somewhere. But the chief believes he has a serial operating in his town, and he convinced us. The last victim wasn’t a user, a prostitute, or a runaway, although the State boys wrote it off that way. She was eighteen years old, driving to a grocery less than two miles away to pick up some ice cream for her father. She was the chief’s daughter, Magozzi. The man is looking for his kid, and no one will help him.’
And with that sentence, Magozzi felt himself lose the battle before it ever really began. Grace wasn’t running toward a murderer; she was leaving on a crusade. He closed his eyes and sighed.
‘This is the kind of case where the new software could really make a difference.’
Magozzi tried not to look miserable, because he had a vague idea that misery probably wasn’t macho. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t known this day was coming. Grace and her three partners in computer wizardry had been knocking themselves out since last October, working on the new program, getting ready to take it on the road, and now that the news was out, Arizona was just the beginning. This thing was really going to snowball.
He’d seen the article in a couple of the recent issues of law enforcement magazines that hit just about every department in the country, and couldn’t imagine a single cop who wouldn’t jump all over it, especially since the service wouldn’t cost them a dime.
The FLEE program was
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