Magician

by Timothy C. Phillips

  She sounded pretty anxious. That was interesting.

  “It concerns their daughter, a young girl who is missing. Mr. Fain’s name, um, came up.”

  There was another pause, this one more marked. When she spoke again, Anelda Ames voice was quick, decided. “I’ll give you my address. Come over and I’ll answer any questions that you might have, Mr. Longville.”

  She hung up without another word. I stared at the phone for a second. Ms. Ames apparently had some information that she wished to share, and some private reason driving her desire to do so. Something about the nature of the case had decided the issue for her. Maybe she had waited a long time to tell whatever was on her mind.

  Outside, the rain hissed over the windows. I got to my feet and went back out into the cold.

  * * *

  White Oak Lane was a cul-de-sac in the midst of an enclave of upper middle class houses. It was very suburban and quiet. Ms. Ames home was a split-level brick arrangement, with an immaculate yard. Tiny oriental style lighting fixtures adorned a cobble-stone walkway that led to the front door.

  I rang the doorbell and stood back. Inside, the chimes played the opening chords to Pirates of Penzance. After a moment, the door opened. A trim, fit lady in her late 40’s greeted me with a quiet smile. She was still quite lovely, and smartly dressed in a light gray blouse and skirt. A single strand of tiny pearls adorned her graceful neck. The pearls matched a streak of white in her otherwise still sandy brown hair. Her bright green eyes regarded me intently, but her smile was friendly and open.

  “Mr. Longville?”

  “That’s right. Ms. Ames, I presume?”

  She nodded slightly. “Please do come in.”

  I stepped inside. She gestured politely toward a recliner before seating herself on the couch. She was possessed of a very refined air. Like a ballerina, I decided. When she was younger, and perhaps not all that much younger, she must have been a very beautiful woman, I thought. I wasn’t so sure she still wasn’t.

  “So, Mr. Longville. Whatever is the mystery that’s brought you out on a day like this?”

  “How women are staying so young-looking nowadays.”

  The flesh around her nose crinkled in a girlish smile.

  “Do go on, Mr. Longville.”

  I had decided to change my stratagem. It wasn’t anything that would win an award at the Private Eye convention, but something about Anelda Ames’ reaction to my questions on the phone had convinced me to tell her the details of the case I was working on. In short, I thought I could trust her.

  “Well, it’s like this. On my way over here, I decided to level with you, Ms. Ames. My services have been retained by the Champion family of Mountainbrook. They have hired me to investigate their daughter’s disappearance. Of course I’m reviewing the evidence. It’s all been gone over before, but I have been looking at some . . . older evidence. Samson’s name came up. No one is accusing him of anything. I was just hoping to talk to him about it.”

  “Oh, I see.” A strange expression came over her face, “The little girl. I suppose it was really me that you needed to talk to all along.” Her tone was questioning in a way, but carried a strange weight.

  “Actually, until today, Ms. Ames, I had no idea you existed. In the course of investigation, I’ve uncovered a couple of facts that were overlooked by the police. It might amount to nothing.”

  “You found out about his past, didn’t you.”

  I felt the hairs on the back of my neck beginning to rise.

  “His past?”

  She gave me a dazzling smile. It reduced her apparent age by ten years.

  “Oh, then maybe I spoke too soon.” The smile suddenly vanished, like the sun going behind a cloud. Her voice became lower, her tone more serious. “To tell the truth, I never cared much for him. My sister knew it, too. We were always close, Eileen and I. Samson was never what I would call normal.”

  “Could you please elaborate on that, Ms. Ames?”

  “I was wrong to assume you read the police reports? And call me Anna.”

  “His records were sealed. Juvenile records usually are. And please, Anna, call me Roland.”

  “You are indeed an honest man, Roland. I know his court records were sealed. I remember that much. But even if you had found a way to see them, they wouldn’t have told the whole story. There are lots of things that never make it into police reports.” She flashed me another million-dollar smile. I returned one of my own, which looked like it was worth about thirty bucks, I figured.

  “Can you tell me what he was in trouble with the law for?”

  “No, his parents would never discuss it. In any case, by that time I could not have cared less.”

  “I take it that you suspected there was something strange about Samson, early on?”

  “I didn’t just suspect, Roland. I found out the hard way. You see, although I live here now—my parents left me this house—I used to live in Chicago, and Atlanta. For many years, I taught ballet.”

  Boy, Roland, you ought to be a detective.

  “I was married, once. It ended in divorce. Neither of us were meant for marriage. At any rate, after the divorce, Samson’s parents, Robert and Eileen, invited me to stay with them for a while. I had decided to pursue a master’s program, and some of the colleges in the area had made attractive offers.”

  She paused, and pressed her hand to the nape of her neck.

  “It was during this time that young Samson developed an . . . infatuation . . . with me.” She looked away. It was a full minute before she spoke again.

  “It wasn’t normal,” she said finally, in a distant voice. I gave her another minute. She collected herself and went on.

  “It started in a harmless enough way. I suppose that I might even have encouraged him, unintentionally, by saying nice things to him. But he was such a shy boy. I felt sorry for him. This was twenty years ago, and people were a bit different, but still he was a late bloomer. He was, I don’t know, fourteen, fifteen? By that age most boys are chasing girls. I thought I had done a good thing. It seemed so, at first. In the beginning, he brought me flowers.”

  “Guess he wouldn’t be the only kid who thought he was in love with his beautiful aunt.”

  Anna Ames blushed slightly, and shook her head.

  “Thank you. No, there was more to it. You see, one night, I found him peeking through my keyhole. I was . . . nude, you know. Brushing my hair after a bath, in front of the mirror. I heard a noise, and when I cracked the door, he was out there, in the hall.

  He was terribly embarrassed. I was shocked, outraged at first. But he was, after all, still just a boy. A big boy, but still so young . . . I mentioned it to Eileen, and Robert talked to him. I supposed that they would discuss matters with him; they were both such kind parents.”

  “So that was the end of it?”

  “I certainly thought so. I had believed that maybe he just needed to know the facts of life, so to speak. I thought he would never dream of doing anything like that again. But I was very, very wrong.” She leaned forward, but without looking me in the eye. Her voice dropped to a whisper.

  “You see, the next time, he was in the room with me.”

  For perhaps the third time in one day, a man I’d never met made my skin crawl.

  “I awoke and he was standing over me. He was naked, and . . . you know. Excited. He had taken my gown completely off. I hadn’t felt a thing. He must have been very painstaking. It must have taken him an hour.” She shuddered visibly.

  “Samson, as I have said, was a large boy, and I am a small woman. He got on top of me. He put his hand over my mouth, and with his other he was . . . touching me. It seemed to go on forever. Finally, I managed to turn my head, and scream. I woke the whole house up. The neighbors too, I might add. He was over two hundred pounds, even then. If he had been one year older, though . . . ” She shook her head and shuddered again. “He’s a monster.”

  I started to say something, but she held up her hand.
>
  “When I think about it, it makes me ill. How many times was he out there, looking at me while I bathed? Or how many times before had he come into the room with me, while I slept . . . ? Naturally, I moved out immediately.”

  “Is that the last you saw of him, Anna?”

  “No. I saw him one more time, about two years ago. We were both at his father’s funeral. We didn’t speak.”

  “So, would you have any idea where Samson is currently staying?”

  “Heavens, no. Nor do I ever care to know.” She rose from her seat, and on her face was a look of inspiration.

  “Wait right here. I’ll bring you something.” She went into a back room. She moved like a much younger woman, I noticed. Presently, she emerged with a picture, which she was removing from the frame.

  She held it out to me, and for the first time, I saw the unpainted face of Samson Fain. A smiling, chunky young man of about twenty years beamed out at me. He wore thick glasses and had dark brown hair, in a bowl haircut.

  “He doesn’t wear glasses any more. He had corrective lens surgery. And he has lost his hair. He’s quite bald. His head is rather bullet shaped.”

  “To your knowledge, does he have any friends?”

  “Like I told you earlier, he’s never had any friends. He simply doesn’t know how to make them. He’d been sheltered all of his early life. That was partly his mother’s fault, I suppose. His father could never get him to show the proper interest in sports . . . or young women his age.”

  “Are there any more relatives? In another state, maybe?”

  “I’m afraid not, Roland. We’re a small clan, and exclusively Southern. No distant kin. Sorry to disappoint you.”

  “Well, that’s okay. I’m getting used to having my hopes dashed of ever finding this guy.”

  “I completely understand. I don’t know what he’s been doing with himself all these years, but it wouldn’t have surprised me one bit if he’d ended up in prison. No one was more shocked than me that he wasn’t arrested in the Champion affair.”

  “So do you think that he was responsible?”

  Anna looked past me, and shrugged lightly. “I don’t know for certain. I have no reason to say that . . . no rational reason. They say he wasn’t there, but I’ve always suspected.”

  “Well, thank you for talking with me today, Anna.”

  “Please, call or come by if there is any way I can be of further assistance.”

  “I appreciate that. You’ve already helped plenty. It certainly was my pleasure to meet you.”

  For some reason, I stopped and turned back to her. There was a strange intensity on her face.

  “Do be careful, Roland Longville. I believe you just might find him.”

  For some reason, we found ourselves embracing. When we drew apart, she smiled at me.

  “I’ll be careful,” I whispered, and turned and walked back out into cold rain.

  A small clan. A big boy. Standing over me. Touching me. With my gown completely off. In the beginning, he brought me flowers.

  I thought of the look on the woman’s face when she had called her own nephew a monster. There was no doubt in my mind, anymore. Samson Fain was my man.

  But how am I going to prove it?

  Fain had been masterful in one thing at least. Besides a few disturbing recollections, he had left no leads for pursuers.

  I looked down the empty street. So Samson Fain was gone, and he had taken his mysteries with him. And apparently, he had gone without a trace. I gazed out at the traffic piling up on the expressway.

  Somewhere out there, beyond the falling rain, Samson Fain was free, going about his business. He held within him the answer to the little girl’s fate. What was he doing now? Was he repeating his master trick on some other poor child, destroying another family forever?

  I had seen magicians as a child. I had never been able to figure out their tricks. Now I would have to learn.

  Chapter 10

  An hour later I sat in my office, thinking about the Fain mess as coffee got cold. Finally I lunged to my feet and walked to my office window and looked down at the street. The evening had cleared, and the rain and sleet had pulled back for a while, replaced by fickle winter sunshine. The people of Birmingham, used to the unpredictable climate, had cheerfully donned their summer clothes and headed out on to the still glistening sidewalks to make the most of the warmth.

  What made Fain the way he was? What makes a man go after little girls? And what makes him want to hurt them as well?

  At what point had he become a calculating predator? Had some buried mental anguish from his own childhood resulted in his twisted sexuality? Or was it some other influence, something that other people wouldn’t even notice, that had pushed some inner button, and changed him irrevocably?

  I had seen cases of sexual abuse—more than I cared to remember. As a detective I’d photographed bite marks, burn marks, and other kind of marks I didn’t like to think about, on the bodies of young victims. Some were alive, others were dead, their bodies found in ditches and culverts. The victims who survived such attacks were rarely ever whole again.

  Could a history of abuse be Samson’s story? Had he become just like someone who had preyed on him in the past? Or was he just one of those rare few who are born into the world evil?

  The door to my office creaked open. Lester Broom was standing there, his enormous frame hunched slightly to get through the doorway.

  “Les, how are you?” I extended my hand, which disappeared in his much larger mitt.

  “Great. Just great.” He walked to the far wall and sat on the edge of my tattered old sofa, his customary seat in my plush office.

  We had quite a bit of history between us. Broom, like me, was an ex-military cop, but he was a little older. He was already a detective by the time I joined the force. For a long time, I had known him only as Detective Broom, who worked the same precinct, but who was far above me in the police hierarchy.

  Then, the summer of the Mountainbrook Slasher had come, and the city had been frozen with fear by the rapist who slashed his victim’s faces. I acted on a hunch and caught the man. But the arrest had been partially due to luck. This had gotten me three things; a promotion to detective; a scar on my face I would carry for the rest of my life; and my partner and best friend, Detective Lieutenant Lester Broom.

  Since then the world had changed considerably for both of us. We had seen each other through dark days. Broom had stood by me through my long fight with the bottle, and I had later comforted him while his wife of twelve years lost her long fight with cancer.

  “I was just going to call you, to thank you for the help earlier, Les,” I said.

  I sat back down. Les Broom was Broom to his friends, Big Broom to those who respected and feared him. To me he was just Les.

  “Well, instead, why don’t you just tell me you love me, and I’ll help you a little more,” Broom growled with a sly smile. I noticed he had a mischievous sparkle in his eye.

  “Les, you didn’t, did you?”

  “Of course not. But someone did, and they accidentally left it on my desk.”

  Broom reached inside of his coat and pulled out a thick brown folder bound with string. On the outside was stamped very clearly in red:

  Property of the Jefferson County

  Department of Juvenile Justice.

  In re: Fain, Samson.

  “Les, you shouldn’t have done this.”

  “Go ahead,” Broom said, a little mysteriously. “Take a look.”

  Inside was a police report, bearing the header of the Homewood Police Department. The first page bore the obligatory black and white mug shots of Samson Fain; they could have been taken the same day as the picture Anelda Ames had given me. Fain had the same bowl-type haircut, the same horn-rimmed glasses,but the expression was very different. The thin smile was gone, and in its place was a hollow-eyed look of despair.

  The arresting officer’s narrative was attached.

  Witness
states that her daughter, a seven-year old white female, was walking to the store near her home when the suspect enticed her to enter his automobile. A neighbor observed the girl entering the suspect’s car, and phoned police. This unit responded and was notified by the complainant that she had observed the suspect’s car pull to the end of the lane, to a wooded area, where a small lake is located. Officers arrived on the scene and discovered the suspect and the child in the suspect’s automobile. The suspect had partially removed the child’s clothing, and was engaged in a sexual battery of the child.

  The officers immediately placed the suspect, who is a minor, under arrest. The suspect was then transported to the Jefferson County Jail, where he was remanded to the custody of Jefferson County Youth Facility. The victim was transported to Children’s Hospital for examination.

  I looked up from the page and leaned back in my chair.

  “My God. He was only sixteen when this happened.”

  Broom had moved over to the window, and was staring out at the iron-gray sky.

  “Don’t get the giggles yet. Take a look at the next one,” he growled to me without turning.

  The second police report was remarkably similar to the first, but there were a few important differences. This report was from the North Precinct of the Birmingham Police Department—my old stomping ground, and Broom’s beat to this day.

  The space for the mug shot had been stamped “On file.” I turned to the next page and read the report.

  Perpetrator was apprehended by this officer at 12:30 a.m., in the vicinity of the Glen Addie public housing project. The complaint was called in by several tenants, who reported hearing screams from a third story apartment. Several officers arrived on scene, and proceeded to cover the exits, while two officers, including this officer, entered the apartments. In apartment 3-b the officers discovered the victim, a ten-year old black female, who stated that she been molested by the perpetrator.

  A search was made of the premises. The perpetrator was discovered in a hallway leading off the main entrance. This is a disused hallway, and the door at the end was barred. In this officer’s opinion, the perpetrator attempted to escape via this route and was unable to open the door.