The King

by Steven James

  The kid continued, “That dude, man. He’s the real deal. Apart from him, the stuff he does—you can find out how to do almost any of the big effects—the walk-around ones too, for that matter—on YouTube. Everything’s posted these days. Some magicians thought it would be cool to break the magicians’ code and reveal all the tricks. Problem is—”

  “It takes the fun out. For the kids.”

  “For everyone.” The boy gathered up the five nickels. “See, the thing is, we say we want to be in on the trick, but as soon as the audience is—”

  “It’s like guessing the end of a book—readers want to guess how it will end, or how it will get to the end, but secretly they want to be wrong. They’re disappointed if they’re right.”

  The boy looked impressed. “Yeah, exactly. So it’s a game we play with the audience, right? A game of deceit.”

  “So where is the quarter?”

  He got a small gleam in his eye. “Where do you think?”

  “In your right jeans pocket,” Richard said, though he knew it was the left one.

  The boy smiled. “No, I saw your eyes. You were watching closely. You saw, didn’t you?”

  “No,” Richard lied.

  He pocketed the nickels. “Anyway, what kind of tricks you looking for?”

  “Rope tricks.”

  “Oh. Cut and restore, make the knot move down the rope, close-up effects, street magic, that sort of thing?”

  “That sort of thing. And I’d like some that are reasonably easy to learn. I only have twenty-four hours before the big performance.”

  “Hmm . . . which is?”

  Richard smiled. “You hit the nail on the head earlier. I’ll be performing at a little girl’s birthday party.”

  “Well, I’ve got a few you can buy, and really, you shouldn’t have to worry, most of ’em are easy to learn.”

  “I’d rather learn them from someone who knows what he’s doing. What would you charge for a little lesson?”

  The boy scoffed lightly and looked around. “It’s not like people are knocking down the door to get in here.” He went to the wall, ripped open a plastic bag with a rope in it. “Okay, so, how much time do you have?”

  “As much as I need.”

  “Tell you what, we’re supposed to close at five, but go ahead and flip the sign on the door.”

  “To closed?”

  “Yeah. That way no one will interrupt us.”

  “Perfect.”

  Richard took care of the sign.

  “Well,” the kid said, “like I mentioned before—deceit. It’s all about deception and misdirection.” He looked at Richard good-naturedly. “Think you can handle that?”

  “I think so.”

  Richard felt a mixture of emotions. Before this night would be over, this young man was going to be dead and he had no idea how short his life span had become. If he knew, what would he do? What phone calls would he make? Would he cry or pray or go outside to look up at the sky and enjoy its majesty one last time? To Richard it was always a fascinating question.

  Sometimes he told people exactly when they were going to die, just to see their reaction.

  Usually, it was denial at first, but eventually it turned to fear, then desperation. And then, in a few cases, to peace. Mostly though, to unassailable terror.

  However, Richard decided he wasn’t going to tell this young man. He would let him die while innocently, obliviously, teaching his tricks, which was something that he seemed to like doing. How many people get to exit this life really enjoying themselves?

  In a way, it was a small recompense for the favor he was doing of giving this private lesson.

  Richard decided to use the rope. After he’d learned a few tricks from the boy, he would show the boy a few of his own.

  36

  Lien-hua was out of the ICU and in a new room on the second floor when Tessa and I arrived at the hospital.

  I carried the wedding invitations I’d picked up on the way, the ones with her last name finally spelled correctly. I also had a candle that I now set down out of sight. On the way over here I’d decided to give it to Lien-hua a little later, when we were alone.

  Tessa brought the rather formidable cardboard box containing the fifteen desserts we’d purchased. She laid it on the chair beside the bed.

  Lien-hua looked at her quizzically. “What’s that?”

  “Something I think you’re going to like.” She gestured for Lien-hua to go ahead and open the box, which she did.

  Inside were pieces of chocolate cake, three each from five different bakeries, all nestled in recycled cardboard containers—that little detail had been very important to Tessa.

  “Friday night you promised me we were going to go cake tasting,” Tessa explained. “I’ve been waiting to do it ever since.”

  “And,” I interjected, “as long as I was going to be here I figured I’d pitch in.”

  “Well, you two just made my day.”

  The next twenty minutes brought a nice respite from the case. We celebrated Lien-hua’s move from the ICU and the fact that she was a good recoverer, and in the end, she chose the double chocolate cake with white cream cheese frosting and yellow frosting chrysanthemums from Weber’s Bakery.

  Tessa and I concurred.

  The two women didn’t finish their five pieces of cake, but I looked at it as my duty to thoroughly taste-test each of mine.

  After the impromptu cake tasting, I asked Tessa if I could borrow her lighter, which she somewhat embarrassedly handed over, then I requested that she give Lien-hua and me a few minutes alone.

  I didn’t know if she had a backup lighter. “No fresh air,” I told her.

  “Gotcha.”

  She stepped out of the room.

  “What do you need the lighter for?” Lien-hua asked me.

  “In a sec. First, I need to tell you about my meeting with Margaret.”

  When I’d finished summarizing the situation concerning Margaret’s brother, Lien-hua said, “Clear it with her. Maybe I can help with the profile—if you do end up suspecting foul play.”

  “Good idea.”

  I put the call through to Margaret right away, and she approved the idea as long as it wasn’t “too taxing on Agent Jiang.” I handed the phone to Lien-hua, who reassured her that she was ready to get back to work.

  After we’d hung up, Lien-hua said, “Now, what about that lighter?”

  Weddings in America tend to have a lot of white, but in China red is a much more prevalent color. Now I palmed the red candle I’d brought in and tried to make it appear magically in my hand.

  “You need a little more work at that,” Lien-hua said good-naturedly.

  “I’m better at picking pockets than sleight of hand.”

  “Not a skill you should probably be advertising.”

  “In any case . . .” I held the candle up. “We spoke about getting one of these for the wedding. A unity candle.”

  “I remember.”

  “And remember in the park when we were talking? Till death do us part?”

  “Yes.”

  “And then later in the hospital you said that when Basque attacked you it was like time stretched out and you saw how—”

  “How unfathomable it is.” She was not quite whispering. “Yes. And how brief.”

  For a moment we were both silent.

  I laid the candle in her hand and gently curled her fingers around it. “Most people just light these at their weddings. I’d like us to light this one whenever we want to remember that we’re one, that we have a lifetime of unfathomable moments together.”

  “Every time?” she asked.

  “Every time.”

  We probably weren’t supposed to be doing this in a hospital, but following protocol has never exactly been my specialty. I
flicked out the lighter’s flame and Lien-hua held up the candle, and then said softly, “I have a feeling we’re going to go through a lot of candles.” There was a delicate intimacy to her words that held the promise of forever.

  “Sounds like my kind of life.”

  And there, in the candlelight of our unity, I kissed her.

  And the moment welcomed me into it and stretched into one that I planned to hold on to forever.

  • • •

  Tessa returned a few minutes later, saw the burning candle, and didn’t ask, but she smiled a little and that was nice to see.

  After all that cake sampling, Lien-hua and Tessa didn’t have any appetite left for supper, but I managed to eat the meal the hospital staff brought up for Lien-hua so it wouldn’t go to waste.

  Before Tessa and I left, I told Lien-hua I’d look over the police reports regarding Corey Wellington’s death and let her know if there was anything suspicious.

  On the way to the car, I returned Tessa’s lighter to her. “I really don’t want you smoking.”

  “I know.”

  “So, are we cool?”

  A pause. “Do you want me to lie and tell you I’ll never smoke again?”

  “I don’t want it to be a lie.”

  She said nothing and I said nothing as we drove to pick up her car and head home.

  ++

  Saundra Weathers had spent the day reading through the two true crime books about Richard Basque that she’d purchased at the mall.

  And, honestly, after finding out what the man had done to his victims, she was having second thoughts about her comfort level should the killer actually try to contact her.

  However, she reassured herself that the two agents outside her home wouldn’t let anything happen to her.

  Or to her daughter, Noni.

  ++

  Richard finished up with the young man from the magic store.

  It’d turned out to be messier than he thought it would be. He’d started out with the rope, but in the end, had moved on to the blade he carried. However, he’d been careful to keep the blood off his clothes. So, no harm done.

  He found a DVD that taught how to escape from handcuffs, both metal handcuffs and plastic flex cuffs. It was a skill he’d always wanted to have and he figured it might come in handy if things didn’t go according to plan tomorrow.

  Then, so that he could practice at home, he helped himself to a few pairs of different types of handcuffs and shackles that were stocked on the shelf.

  Before leaving the magic shop, he scrawled four words in the man’s blood on the floor in the back room, then he straightened his shirt and went home to his dogs to practice his tricks for tomorrow night.

  37

  The files from the Atlanta Police Department concerning Corey Wellington’s death were waiting for me in my e-mail in-box when I arrived home.

  After checking the online reports to see if Agent Hammet had posted any updates on the calls she’d been making to the people close to Basque’s previous victims, and finding that she had not, I turned to Corey’s files.

  Even though I’d never met him, as I looked over the police reports I couldn’t help but feel a sense of grief and loss.

  Mostly I work homicides, but I’ve been called in to look over all too many suicide cases over the years and I’ve never gotten used to them. Seeing the corpse, knowing that the person did this to himself in whatever manner he’d chosen—a self-inflicted gunshot wound, an overdose, hanging, or, as in this case, a stab wound up into the chest—makes me feel a visceral sweep of sadness.

  You can’t help but wonder what drove the person to such an extreme act, to actually end his own life. You can’t help but wonder those things.

  If this one is even a suicide at all.

  Many times it’s depression, just as Corey evidently suffered from. Sometimes it’s disappointment or grief. I’ve worked suicides in which someone lost a job and killed himself, or lost a loved one and couldn’t stand the thought of living without her.

  I consulted on one case in which a teenage girl slit her wrists and bled to death in her bathtub because she saw that her boyfriend had changed his status on Facebook from “in a relationship” to “single.” One of the most tragic suicides I’ve ever run into was a father who took his own life when none of his children wished him a happy Father’s Day. He left them a note telling how disappointed he was in them, how it was their fault. But he had the date wrong. Father’s Day wasn’t for another week.

  It’s deeply disturbing to think about how many people in the world are dying inside, screaming for someone, anyone, to care, reaching out again and again, sometimes to the hand that slaps them, because, all too often, without that hand they have nothing at all.

  And eventually they stop reaching out altogether.

  • • •

  I directed my attention to the fatal knife wound.

  It looked like it was consistent with a self-inflicted one that would be caused by leaning forward and thrusting the blade up into your abdomen toward your heart.

  Based on the position of the body and the blood patterns on the carpet it certainly appeared that Corey had killed himself.

  I spent the rest of the evening studying the files, taking notes, deciding what aspects of the enigmatic suicide warranted further investigation. In the end, I decided that in the morning I would begin by taking a more careful look at the same thing Margaret had mentioned: the medication Corey was taking, specifically, the type, dosage, and potential side effects.

  ++

  Tessa stared at her phone.

  At Aiden’s number.

  All she had to do was hit “reply.”

  But what was she supposed to tell him?

  Nothing.

  Nothing yet.

  But she needed to see him.

  She needed to . . .

  It would’ve been a lot easier if he’d been the one to offer to text her.

  She flipped the phone over and plunked it facedown on her desk.

  Everything that was going on this week seemed to press in on her, tightening around her, causing this suffocating pressure on her heart. It made it hard to think.

  Lien-hua was recovering, so that was one bit of good news. But Basque was on the loose, apparently somewhere nearby. Plus, all the questions she’d talked about with Brineesha concerning unanswered prayer, and with Patrick about, well, poisoned beliefs, and now her own personal issues with Aiden and trying to come up with a speech and the nerve to speak in front of a thousand people—all of it was overwhelming.

  A graduation speech?

  They’re always about how to have a successful life.

  What did she know about being a success?

  Well, basically, nothing.

  But she was an expert at the opposite.

  Just tell people not to be like you and you’ll be all set.

  She jammed in her earbuds and disappeared into the lyrics of Boomerang Puppy’s song “Eclipse.” It was pretty hard to make out the words, but if you could, they were actually not that bad, and she knew them by heart:

  A dark ache clutched at me

  tearing apart the tower of hope that

  looked so shiny, so permanent, so true.

  Tremors run deep

  beneath the confidence that

  I’d hoped would carry me through

  the night.

  A nice encouraging sentiment there to really lift her spirits.

  She retrieved her pack of cigarettes from where she kept them hidden in her closet and fished her lighter out of her purse.

  Stared at it for a long time.

  Man, she hated, hated, hated that she’d gotten into this. Cancer, whatever, she knew all that, of course, she did, but still . . .

  And the worst part of the whole de
al: whenever she smoked she felt like she was letting Patrick down.

  Still, it did something for her, helped calm her in some weird way and she understood why people got hooked on it.

  But at least she wasn’t cutting anymore. At least there was that.

  She told herself the mantra of all addicts: that she could always quit tomorrow.

  She slipped outside and went to the small hedgerow on the edge of their property where she usually went to smoke. Crickets chirped at her from the dark folds of the night. Somewhere, a dog barked.

  Lighting up, she closed her eyes and took a long drag.

  She wanted the cigarette to comfort her, wanted the cool, damp night to wrap around her and just help her to relax, but it didn’t take long at all for her to realize that none of it was helping.

  Praying? Yeah, well, she wasn’t even sure she believed in that.

  Over the last couple months she’d been reading her Bible a little—which was one of the reasons she’d brought up the whole church thing with Patrick—and now she remembered the opening lines of Ecclesiastes: “‘Meaningless! Meaningless!’ says the Teacher. ‘Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.’”

  More encouragement for her.

  Maybe she could give a speech on that.

  Yeah, that would totally fly.

  Right now, she just needed a way to sort out the questions and see if any answers lay beneath, as the lyrics of “Eclipse” referred to it, the confidence that she’d hoped would carry her through the night.

  38

  From his hotel balcony Valkyrie stared out across the nighttime DC skyline, with the Washington Monument rising into prominence against the dark sky. The city’s building height restrictions made the skyline not nearly as magnificent as New York City’s, but still, with all the symbols of freedom, it was just as memorable.

  At one time, Valkyries were worshipped as goddesses in Norse mythology. They were the ones who chose who would live and who would die on the battlefields. Eventually, the stories morphed, as myths do, and Valkyries became known as seductive spirits who lived in Valhalla and served fallen battle heroes.