The Magician Murders

by Josh Lanyon

  Jason said, “Van der Beck is a member of the magic community. He was acquainted with both victims. He has access to picture-hanging wire like that used to strangle Khan, and I’m assuming he has access to Carfentanil. He works at the animal preserve where the drug used to kill Santos was taken from.”

  Reynolds said, “Noted. But the same could be said of the magic-shop owner, Ian Boz. He doesn’t work at the animal preserve, but in all likelihood, he would know how to gain access to those drugs.”

  “True,” Jason admitted.

  “Also, we don’t know for a fact Santos was murdered. His death was ruled a suicide.”

  “I’d like to see the coroner’s report,” Sam said.

  “Of course you would,” Reynolds said drily. “Well, I’ll make sure you get to see whatever you want. And I’ll have Cheyenne PD put a BOLO out on Boz. Meanwhile, I think paying Terry Van der Beck a visit might be a good idea.” He gave Sam a droll look. “That is, I’m assuming you’d like to have a word with him?”

  Sam smiled. His eyes were like ice chips.

  “Oh, I’d like a word,” he said.

  * * * * *

  Detective Ward of Cheyenne PD met Jason and Sam outside Boz’s Brew with a search warrant, but the warrant turned out to be unnecessary.

  Although the lights were off and the CLOSED sign hung on the front entrance, when Ward tried the door, it opened, and the sound of pixie dust sprinkled down.

  Ward called, “Ian Boz? Terry Van der Beck? Cheyenne PD. Show yourself.”

  No answer. Nothing moved within the aisles of books and CDs, DVDs, silk bouquets, velvet doves, stuffed rabbits, colored handkerchiefs, cards, posters, stacks of top hats… The rows of magic miscellany seemed to stretch on and on into the gloom. On either side of the door, two automatons in satin tunics and goofy, jeweled turbans silently tried to stare each other down.

  Ward looked back at Jason and Sam. She raised her brows in inquiry.

  Cars whizzed past on the street behind them. The silence from within the shop was absolute and unsettling.

  Sam nodded. Ward drew her pistol. Jason had resisted the urge to pull his weapon until Sam had pulled his, but his nerves were jangling like a seven-bell fire alarm.

  Not good. Definitely not good. Something is not right.

  Ward pushed the door the rest of the way open, and they followed her inside.

  “Is anyone in here?” Ward called. “Cheyenne PD. Show yourself.”

  One of them must have brushed against the tall wire racks because something tumbled from above and landed in the aisle. A blue and white stuffed rabbit in a black top hat, holding a magic wand, gazed up with plastic googly eyes at the three pistols trained on it.

  Sam made a sound of amused disgust.

  “It looks like nobody’s home.” Ward glanced around uneasily.

  “They should be open,” Jason said. “According to their store hours.”

  She nodded, holstering her pistol and moving toward the rear exit. “I’ll check behind the building. There’s a parking area back there.”

  Sam was continuing his sweep of the store floor. Jason stared at the front desk and the door leading to the storeroom.

  “I’ll check the storeroom.”

  Sam glanced at him and nodded curtly.

  Jason went around the sales desk and craned his head around the doorframe. The room was dark, too dark to safely move around though he could see empty crates and cardboard boxes had been shoved toward the wall. Tall metal shelves were crammed with formless articles.

  It sort of looked like a large trunk had been tilted on end and left between two rows of shelves. Something about the outline of that trunk, the way the light from the main floor gleamed on its glossy surface, raised the hair on Jason’s head. Was that thing made of glass?

  He felt around for a light switch. Failed to find it. He tried the other side of the doorframe and located the switch.

  The overhead fluorescent lamps came on with a ghostly buzz, casting a sickly green light over the crammed interior of the storeroom.

  Jason stared at the trunk—stared and stared. He couldn’t look away. He knew what he was seeing, but somehow his brain could not seem to make sense of it.

  This was a replica of the Chinese Water Torture Cell. A device invented by Harry Houdini for his most famous escape. The frame and heavy stocks were made of Honduras mahogany and nickel-plated steel with brass fixtures. The front consisted of a plate of half-inch tempered glass. The apparatus weighed around three-quarters of a ton and held 250 gallons of water. It was relatively small. Only 26 and a half inches wide and 59 inches tall. Too small for the large man jammed upside down into the tank.

  Ian Boz’s eyes stared in horror through the murky blur of the water still lapping ominously against the glass.

  A small yellow and green something flickered at the bottom of the cell. For a crazy instant, Jason imagined it might be a fish. Sanity reasserted itself. Jason knelt and used the zoom on his phone’s camera to get a better look without chancing disturbing any crime-scene evidence.

  He stared at the screen of his phone. He was looking at a card. A tarot card. A feckless young man in a green tunic was about to step off a cliff.

  Jason knew that card. Special Agent Abigail Dreyfus had mistakenly read the description to him in her office the afternoon Boz had pulled a gun on her.

  The Fool.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Hard to say what was worse.

  SAC Reynolds openly laughing at him, or BAU Chief—and current boyfriend—Sam Kennedy trying not to laugh at him.

  “Abby Dreyfus a serial killer,” Reynolds repeated for the nth time, the wobble in his voice barely held in check by what was clearly a will of steel.

  Jason couldn’t help looking at Sam who, to his credit, looked grave and sympathetic—except for that goddamned gleam of amusement in the back of his eyes. Sam, who usually had all the sense of humor of a marauding grizzly bear, found this funny. In the middle of a fucking homicide investigation, Sam Kennedy found something humorous.

  Jason was never going to live this down.

  “Abby Dreyfus a magician.” Reynolds’ voice shook again because apparently it was even more ridiculous to be suspected of being a magician than a serial killer.

  “I didn’t know she was your goddaughter,” Jason said. He couldn’t quite keep the edge out of his voice. “I didn’t realize you’d known her all her life.”

  “So we heard,” Reynolds said. “You thought she was this Andy Alexander, one half of a brother and sister magic act. The brother being this Terry Van der Beck.”

  “Elle Diamond seemed to recognize her.”

  But it wasn’t just that. It was Dreyfus’ odd, seemingly random questions, her strong feelings about magic and magicians, the odd coincidence of her talking about The Fool card before The Fool had shown up at a crime scene, and then finally calling in sick the very day Boz’s body turned up. Okay, yes, granted, not circumstantial so much as coincidental. A string of peculiar coincidences which, when added up, seemed to mean…something.

  Why the hell hadn’t he done the intel on Andy Alexander before voicing his suspicions about Dreyfus?

  Because he’d been so staggered by the discovery of Boz’s body with that particular card, he’d blurted all his apprehensions out to Sam.

  Talk about The Fool.

  Not that he blamed Sam for sharing those concerns with SAC Reynolds. Jason didn’t even really blame Reynolds, who’d nearly fallen out of his big leather executive chair, because now that Jason had the full story on Agent Dreyfus, his suspicions were ridiculous.

  Clearly the situation with Kyser—or whoever his stalker was—had made him paranoid.

  Sam’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “Putting Special Agent Dreyfus aside for the moment, West was right about the first two killings being linked together. I think we can safely add Ian Boz to the list of our unsub’s victims.”

  Reynolds stopped chortling. “Unsub be damned. I thin
k we know who our budding serial killer is. This crack-brained Van der Beck kid. According to his file, he’s got a long history of mental illness and violence.” He glanced at the file in front of him. “Highlights include trying to burn his parents’ house down when he was eleven and trying to burn his school down when he was thirteen.”

  Serial killers and fire. He remembered talking to Dreyfus about the symbolism of fire in magic. That was one he could have added to the list. One of the typical warning signs potential serial killers displayed was a love of setting fires.

  Reynolds was still reading over the file. “When he was sixteen, he tried to strangle a classmate.” He shook his head. “They should have thrown the key away on him a long time ago; unfortunately, it’s very difficult to permanently lock anyone in the loony bin these days.”

  I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto. Although Kansas was probably worse. Not that Jason had any sympathy for psychopaths. They could throw the key away on the Martin Pinks and Jeremy Kysers and Terry Van der Becks for all he cared.

  Reynolds added, “Seeing that he’s not the brother of this Andy Alexander, why is he suddenly so focused on magicians?” He looked at Sam.

  Sam said, “I don’t know about magic as a performance art, but the occult does attract certain aberrant personality types.” He added, “Of course, so does religion.”

  Jason said, “Magic is an aesthetic exploration of mystery and possibility.”

  “Is that so? I know it attracts oddballs and misfits,” Reynolds said.

  Sam said, “You’ll make yourself crazy trying to understand why serial killers do what they do.”

  “Since you’re the guy who wrote the book on catching them, I’ll have to take your word,” Reynolds said. “I have to ask. How many tarot cards are there?”

  “He’s using the Rider-Waite tarot deck,” Jason said. “That’s seventy-eight cards altogether, though so far he’s sticking to the twenty-two trump cards of the Major Arcana. He seems to be deliberately matching particular cards to his victims. Santos was The Magician, Khan The Hanged Man, and Boz The Fool. It would be hard to predict potential victims based on how a disturbed mind might interpret the cards. But I’m anxious about Elle Diamond. I think she’s a good match for The High Priestess.”

  “Ward’s already spoken to Diamond,” Sam reassured him.

  “Seventy-eight potential victims?” Reynolds stared at Sam.

  Sam said briskly, “Not going to happen. He’s already devolving. You just have to set the trap and usher him in.”

  “And how do we do that? You know, this is business as usual for you, but for us—”

  “You stick to the plan, Chuck. You join Cheyenne PD and Routt Sheriff’s Office for the joint press conference this afternoon in a show of force. Tonight, Van der Beck’s photograph will go out over the airwaves on your local TV stations. In both the press conference and the news reports, Van der Beck will hear that law enforcement has taken every precaution to make sure the convention attendees are protected and that the event can proceed as planned.”

  “And you really think that’s going to lure him in?”

  “Guaranteed.”

  Reynolds rubbed his jaw doubtfully. “He’d not only have to be crazy, he’d have to be pretty damned dumb. You really think he’s that dumb?”

  “He’s not dumb. He’s megalomaniac. He thinks he’s gotten away with murder three times. He’s beginning to believe he’s invincible. He’ll view the press conference and news reports as direct challenges.” Sam glanced at Jason. “Look what happened when he imagined West had him in his sights. Instead of fleeing, he went after him. And when he failed to kill West, he immediately compensated for that failure by killing Ian Boz—despite knowing he would inevitably be the primary, if not sole, suspect.”

  Reynolds nodded, sighed. “Okay. Makes sense. I guess. You wouldn’t want to join us for Friday’s festivities, by any chance?”

  Sam hesitated, meeting Jason’s gaze once more. Jason knew what he was thinking. If Sam Kennedy happened to turn up on the national nightly news, it was liable to alert someone paying close attention to the possible location of MIA Special Agent Jason West.

  “I’ll think about it,” Sam said. “I’ll let you know one way or the other this evening.”

  * * * * *

  They were just pulling out of the parking lot when Jason’s phone rang.

  He glanced at Dreyfus’ contact info and groaned.

  “Better get it over with,” Sam advised in the tone of one with a lot of practice at receiving irate phone calls from colleagues.

  Jason clicked the Accept button. “West.”

  “Really, West?” Dreyfus said. “I seem like a serial killer to you?”

  “No, of course not. I just…”

  “I mean, I’m not a fan of magic, but going around knocking off magicians seems a little extreme.”

  “I agree. I apologize. I really am sorry.”

  “I was the one who guessed that there would be a tarot card at the Santos crime scene. Why would I point that out if I was the one leaving the cards?”

  “I know. That was partly why I, er, started having doubts. I thought maybe it was a…” He glanced at Sam’s profile and cleared his throat. “A cat-and-mouse thing.”

  Sam made a smothered sound that turned into a cough.

  Dreyfus began to splutter.

  “Anyway,” Jason said quickly. “Aside from thinking you might be a serial killer, I enjoyed working with you.”

  There was an astonished silence, and then Dreyfus laughed. “Aside from you never wanting to investigate anything that doesn’t have to do with art history, I enjoyed working with you too.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I guess this is it, then? Are you finished, um, consulting on the Khan case?”

  “Yeah. I think I’ve provided as much insight as I’m able to.”

  Sam was staring straight ahead. He could have been alone in the car for all the attention he appeared to be paying. Jason searched his soul and said, “Hey, Dreyfus. I think you should probably try to get a search warrant for Elle Diamond’s place.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. It’s a long shot, but…yeah. I think that moving van of hers is probably going to turn up on some of the surrounding security cameras in the Khans’ neighborhood.”

  “Wow. Okay. I’ll do that. I’ll try, anyway.”

  They chatted a minute or two more and then said their goodbyes. Jason clicked off his phone.

  Sam said, “Nicely done, West.”

  “Yeah. Well.” Jason turned to stare out the window.

  Sam reached over and gave his shoulder a squeeze. Buck up, little buckaroo. “You can only do what you can do within the confines of the law—which you’ve sworn to uphold.”

  “Yes. I know.” Jason sighed. He thought it over and said more cheerfully, “Anyway, she’s never going to get a search warrant on my say so. I’m the guy who accused her of being a serial killer to her godfather.”

  Sam’s lips twitched. “Possibly not. Shall we celebrate the semi-successful end to your case? How about I treat you to the best steak dinner in Cheyenne?”

  “It’s a little early for dinner.”

  Sam gave him a sideways look. “True, but if we get the meal out of the way, I figure we can find other ways to spend the evening.”

  Jason smiled.

  * * * * *

  The steak dinner was delicious.

  And the preparations for “other ways to spend the evening” were pleasantly underway when Jason suddenly gasped and sat up, brushing Sam’s hand aside.

  “Jesus Christ.”

  He must have sounded sufficiently horrified because Sam rolled over, reaching for his pistol. Jason barely noticed, barely noted the dangerous, glittering look in Sam’s eyes. Jason’s vision was turned inward, seeing the terrifying and inevitable unfolding of events that might be happening in Cheyenne at that very moment.

  He said, “It’s not tomorrow ni
ght. It’s tonight.”

  “What are you talking about?” Sam demanded.

  Jason stared at him. “Sam, Friday night is the club’s official opening. But there’s a private show tonight. Tonight, it’s magicians only.”

  Sam searched his face with a hard, blue gaze. “The magicians’ club? There’s a show at Top Hat White Rabbit tonight?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure? Why would no one have mentioned that? Nobody said a word about a private show.”

  Jason pressed his fist against his forehead. How the hell had he forgotten? When Reynolds and Sam were discussing their trap for Terry Van der Beck, how had he not remembered then? How the hell had that skipped his mind?

  “Because they’re magicians,” he said tightly. “Because their world is secluded, secret, separate.” He opened his eyes. “Sam, you’ve got to believe me. I was wrong about Dreyfus, and I might even be wrong about Kyser, but I’m not wrong about this. You think seventy-eight victims are too many? Every magician in Cheyenne is going to be in that club tonight.”

  Sam reached for his phone.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Dinner for the six p.m. seating was being served, and the first show was already underway when Cheyenne PD and the FBI arrived at Top Hat White Rabbit.

  The leggy receptionist from Ted Fields’ office gaped as uniformed officers and blue-and-gold-jacketed agents flooded the reception hall. No one even had to say the magic word. She reached beneath the tall wooden counter, pressed a button, and the hidden door in the bookcase swung open.

  Jason stepped aside as agents and cops filed past through the narrow doorway. He studied the shelves of the bookcase. Of Legerdemain and Diverse Juggling Knacks by John Braun. The Encyclopedia of Stage Illusions by Burling Hull. The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin by Harry Houdini. The History of Conjuring and Magic by Henry Ridgely Evans had a bookmark sticking up.

  Jason reached for the book and pulled out the bookmark. A tarot card. The Tower. A tower appeared to have been struck by lightning and was now burning. People tumbled from windows into the black sky, pursued by flames. Jason’s heart seemed to tumble with them.