No Escape

by Meredith Fletcher

  “She does magic.”

  “She must be good at it if she can lift your wallet. ’Course, her looking like she does, I could see how you got distracted.”

  Heath ignored that. “Actually, the magic angle is what I want you to look into. Gibson picked up the woman down here. She’d taken her sister to a magic show Gibson put on in Chicago. Check and see if any of the other victims had a connection to magic in any way. Maybe Gibson is culling from a more select group than we thought.”

  “Looking for relatives of people who jones on magic?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll have a look.” Jackson hesitated for a moment. “Something you told me when you first started training me to work homicide—stay detached. Look at everything from the outside. The minute you crawl inside of an investigation, you lose all perspective. I’m gonna tell you now, because you’re my friend and I love you like a brother and you’re likely gonna be my best man when I wed my second Missus Portman, that you’re all kinds of up inside of this investigation. The captain came out asking what did I know about you impersonating a coroner. I told him I didn’t know nothing.”

  “I can’t be detached from this one. Gibson killed Janet. Look into those cases and let me know what you come up with regarding the magic angle.” Heath broke the connection and tossed the phone onto the rumpled bed. He got a fresh beer from the refrigerator and stood at the window looking out again, trying to figure out what his next move was going to be.

  Instead, to his surprise, he couldn’t keep his thoughts away from Lauren Cooper and how she’d felt struggling against him. He closed his eyes and could smell that berry vanilla scent again. Then he forced his eyes open and sipped his beer.

  There was a thread here. Nobody killed that clean. He was going to find it, and he was going to use it to strangle Gibson.

  * * *

  “There.” From the backseat of the Jaguar X351, Gibson pointed at the low-rent hotel off the beaten path of the city. “Pull into the parking lot.”

  In front of him, behind the steering wheel, Roylston resettled his bulk, looking like a steroid-infused earthquake in motion. Dressed in a black business suit, his skin dark and his head shaved, he could have passed for a native to the island. Only the Boston accent marked him as an outsider. During the three years he’d been with Gibson, Roylston hadn’t ever spoken much, and never mentioned anything personal. As far as Gibson knew, the bodyguard/chauffeur didn’t have a life outside of protecting him.

  But all three of the live-in security specialists who tried to manage Gibson were like that. None of them wanted to get to know him, and they didn’t want him to know anything about them. They got paid to watch over him, protect him and try to rein in his “impulses.”

  Escaping the watchdogs that had been with him throughout his life had been the initial part of the Game he played now. He’d avoided his protectors when he was a boy, escaped them at times for glorious bits of freedom, but in the end he’d always let them catch him in order to satisfy his father. Even at forty-three, Gibson didn’t want to completely escape his father’s attempts to control him. That was the very best part of the Game.

  That particular thrill was even better than the killing, which he relished.

  The bodyguards tended to be compliant with him. They didn’t want his father to know when they lost him, so they covered up most of his escapes—except for the ones that were too egregious.

  His father covered for him as well, trapped by his desire to keep his corporation protected and to have an offspring to carry on his name. Gibson had robbed the man of that as well by choosing his stage name. Still, his father held out foolish hope of someday controlling him. The man was trapped, simply couldn’t let go of the selfish dream.

  That was the very best part.

  Roylston glanced up at the hotel. “This is where that Atlanta detective is staying.”

  The fact that the man knew so much of his business irritated Gibson. He rested his elbows at his sides, curled his elbows and steepled his fingers under his chin. “I know that.”

  With obvious reluctance, Roylston guided the sedan into the parking lot. The headlights flashed against the parked cars in the lot. “This is dangerous.”

  “Of course it’s dangerous. I wouldn’t visit if it weren’t dangerous. The circus doesn’t really come alive until the aerialists perform without a net, until the lion tamer sticks his head inside a lion’s mouth. Death hovers there, just a snap away. And the potential of that is what keeps the crowd on the edges of their seats.” Gibson smiled and leaned over to the window so that he could look up.

  Atlanta Detective Heath Sawyer still stood at the window. His shadow was a blurry image behind the curtain.

  “You know I’m close, don’t you, Detective?” Gibson smiled at that thought, savoring it because he knew that closeness was making the man’s wounds hurt even more. When Gibson had killed the female detective in Atlanta—Janet, her name rolled so invitingly across his tongue—he had known her death would push the man to go the distance. Gibson had considered killing both of them, but in the end he’d decided not to. Having a mortal enemy was a delightful concoction that he’d never thought of.

  Heath Sawyer didn’t worry Gibson. He had lawyers and riches that would keep the police far from his door. And if the man got too bothersome, it was never too late to take care of that loose end.

  After a couple of minutes, the shadow at the window went away.

  Gibson waited for a short time longer, enough to make Roylston uncomfortable. Then he leaned back in his seat again and addressed the driver. “Let’s go.”

  Roylston had the sedan rolling within the next heartbeat. “Any particular destination?”

  “Downtown, I think. I want to see how the revelers are doing.” Gibson took a California ten dollar gold piece from his pocket and rolled it across his knuckles. The coin leaped and flew like it was a living thing. He closed his hand on the coin, folding the fingers in with his other hand, then opened his hand again to reveal that the coin had vanished.

  He smiled at the smoothness with which he worked. He was good and he knew it. The Atlanta detective could disappear just as easily when the time came.

  Until then, there was the Game to play.

  * * *

  Back in Lauren’s hotel room, the phone call to her mother didn’t last too long. Chemo wore her out and left her in a fog. Plus, it was so late that Lauren had woken her up when she’d called. Her mother had insisted that she call when she returned to her room. Their conversation had been sad and groggy and disjointed, and had finally trickled off when her mother no longer had the strength to maintain it.

  The doctors said she was improving, that this round of drugs was battling the cancer back into submission. She wasn’t supposed to undergo any stress during this time. That wasn’t going to happen.

  After leaving Heath Sawyer’s room, Lauren had had to return to the morgue to finish paperwork she’d left undone earlier when getting to know more about Heath Sawyer. She’d worked in a numb state, just plodding through the information, borrowing a computer to get information she didn’t know, and contacting the insurance company as well as the State Department.

  All of that had been exhausting.

  Now, she couldn’t sleep, and it was two o’clock in the morning. She kept seeing Megan laid out on that table, so impersonal, so still, so cold to the touch. But the memory was confusing because Heath Sawyer was also there. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get the man out of her mind. She could still feel the strength of him when she’d fought him, still see the indomitable will in his green-flaked gold eyes and the set of his stubbled chin.

  But she remembered the pain in them, too, when he’d told her about his old partner. Lauren remembered that image of him the most, that vulnerability that she’d seen that she was sure he would deny.

  There was something more behind that pain, though. Heath Sawyer had been hurt somewhere else along the way, too. She could sense
it in him even though she couldn’t yet put her finger on it. It was the same way she could take apart an illusion. Something was there just behind the curtain. If she spent enough time around him, she would have it.

  That was why many of the illusionists who frequented Mirage Magic in Chicago where she worked insisted on giving private shows for her as they perfected pieces of their performances. If they could fool her, they could fool anyone.

  Lauren didn’t think that was true, but it was nice to hear.

  Warren Morganstern, the semiretired magician who had started the business over forty years ago as a supplement to his performances, told her that she had an eye for magic. More than that, though, she had a love for magic. She wanted to believe that magic could happen, and that made all the difference.

  Seven years ago, when Lauren had been in college, she’d answered an ad in a newspaper for a part-time position at the magic store. When Megan had found out about it, she’d teased her unmercifully, till Lauren had finally gone and applied, knowing she was going get turned down, just to shut her sister up.

  Then magic had happened. Lauren had gotten the job at Morganstern’s shop. She’d never asked how many other people had applied or what had made her application stand out among the others. Seven years later, she had taken over the store, allowing Morganstern to completely retire from performing, though he kept active in the business to socialize with the other magicians.

  Since Lauren had started working there, she’d also started booking some of the acts, and she’d gotten successful at that. After a couple of years, she had doubled the store’s business, and Morganstern was giving serious thought to moving to a larger building.

  Lauren hadn’t thought of the job as permanent, but she couldn’t think of anything else she’d rather do. She loved magic. She loved the possibility of what-if.

  For a while, she tried to relax and go to sleep. Her flight tomorrow didn’t leave till the afternoon. Her mind wouldn’t stop spinning with everything that had happened.

  Finally, she gave up trying to sleep, sat up in bed and got her laptop computer out of the bag. She logged on to one of the community boards that she used for the magic store and started asking questions about Gibson.

  Someone out there had to know who the man was. Lauren still didn’t believe the man had killed Megan, but someone had. Heath Sawyer seemed to be the only person really digging into the investigation. Lauren thought that if she could prove the killer wasn’t Gibson, maybe Heath’s attention would refocus on the case from a different perspective.

  Lauren was not going to let the killer go free if she could help it.

  * * *

  Wearing skintight surgical gloves, Gibson took out one of the specially embossed cards he’d had made when he first decided to kill. Ordering the cards anonymously from Thailand was simple. He’d used a drop box at a box store, an online pay service that accepted cash up front, and ordered from a large printer that did a lot of volume in special jobs. He knew the police investigators had tried tracking the origin of the cards he’d sent to claim his kills, but they hadn’t been able to do that.

  Still seated in the rear of the luxury car, with Roylston looking on, though he was pretending not to, Gibson played with the card. Even with the gloves on, his skills were amazing. The card appeared and disappeared with lightning quickness.

  Tiring of the game, he slid the card into an envelope he’d gotten straight from a box, affixed the address label he’d cut from an image he’d downloaded from the police department’s website. He added a picture of the young woman who’d been recently killed, a picture of her in the water not far from where her body had been discovered by two young Germans looking for a romantic section of the beach. He pulled the paper from the sticky strip, made sure there were no fibers clinging to it, and sealed the envelope.

  When he was finished, he waved to Roylston, who pulled over to the public mailbox in front of the seedy hotel where Heath Sawyer was staying. Gibson thumbed down the window and leaned out for just a moment, knowing there were no security cameras on the premises to catch him in the act.

  He popped the letter through the slot, then sank back in his seat as Roylston guided the car through the parking lot like a big shark. Gibson hummed to himself and took out the gold coin again, rolling it deftly across his knuckles, almost mesmerizing himself as the gleaming metal caught the reflection of the neon lights.

  Chapter 5

  You shouldn’t be here. Heath told himself that again and again as he stood on the fringe of the crowd at the graveyard service. You should be back in Jamaica trying to find Gibson.

  In the end, though, he’d had to come to Chicago to attend the Megan Taylor funeral. Part of the reason he’d felt the need to be there had to do with the investigation. The other part was the guilt that he still felt for deceiving Lauren Cooper. He didn’t know how he was going to make up for that, so he concentrated on the investigative area.

  Once the police departments in the various cities had realized they were working a serial killer after the White Rabbit cards had started coming in, they’d gone out to the victims’ families and friends and gotten as many pictures and as much video as they could. They’d combed through those images and video footage, the same way he and Janet had done.

  No one had ever seen Gibson.

  That didn’t mean he hadn’t been there, though, and it was that hope that had brought Heath to Chicago.

  At least, that was what he told himself, but he knew he wanted to see Lauren Cooper again, as well. The woman had left quite an impression on him.

  She sat there beside the coffin with an older woman that Heath assumed was her mother. The woman appeared frail and exhausted, leaning on Lauren for physical and emotional support. Big sunglasses crowded the woman’s face under the broad-brimmed hat. Heath had noticed the lack of eyebrows and the wig at first sight and had known she was taking chemo.

  Beside her, dressed in black, her head bare and bowed, Lauren held the older woman’s hands in one of hers and wrapped her thin shoulders with her free arm.

  It was a good day for a funeral, which was an odd thing to think, Heath admitted to himself, but he did. He’d attended many funerals when it had been raining or so muggy you could drown in your own clothes. The sun was shining, the trees were green and vibrant overhead, blocking the early afternoon sun and dropping a green tinted haze over the cemetery. A gentle wind blew to stir things up, but even then the grounds were quiet enough that the preacher’s voice rang out.

  A lot of people had turned up for the funeral. That was one of the things that Heath had noticed during his attendance at the funerals of murder victims, and of his own family. There were always more people at a young person’s funeral than at an older person’s burial. Common sense said that an older person would have made more friends and more solid relationships. In actual practice, more people attended the funerals of the young.

  Death was a new experience for young people, and it was scary at the same time. They didn’t know how to act, and when an older person passed, they were always a generation or two away. Death didn’t seem so close. So they came to funerals because it was a social event and because it was something new.

  Now you’re being cynical. Heath took in a breath and let it out. He was tired. He still wasn’t sleeping well because the frustration clamored inside him. But over the past three nights, the last one in Jamaica and the two since, he’d had nightmares, too. He still had the ones involving Janet, but Lauren Cooper was in there now as well, and he didn’t know why.

  The worst one had been when he’d stood by helplessly while Gibson put Lauren into one of those boxes magicians always used, locked her down tight, then broke out the chain saw. In practice, magicians routinely passed swords, guillotines and chain saws through those boxes. No one ever got hurt, though. But in the dream, Lauren had screamed in pain, and blood had cascaded to the floor. Heath hadn’t been able to save her.

  A creeping chill climbed Heath’s spine. He
was dressed in a black suit, fitting in with the other attendees, but he suddenly found himself wishing he’d brought a jacket.

  And a gun.

  His own sidearm was back in Atlanta, and the revolver he’d bought in Jamaica was still there in that hotel room behind the air vent cover. Getting a pistol while in Chicago was too problematic.

  He’d slept in his rental car down the street from Madeline Taylor’s home. That was where Lauren had been spending her nights. She had her own apartment, but she’d stayed with her mother. Heath had gotten a police scanner from a pawn shop and tuned it in, then grabbed as much sleep as he could during the night while watching over the two women. In the mornings, he’d tailed Lauren as she’d gone about making arrangements for her sister’s funeral.

  He’d gone back to stakeout mentality, sitting on a person of interest and hoping for the best. There was no reason to think Gibson would be there, but the killer’s habits were accelerating and no one knew why. Sometimes they just did. The adrenaline rush the killer got from killing wore off faster and faster.

  Taking shelter behind the tree where he stood, Heath raised the small digital camera he’d brought with him from Jamaica, part of his investigation go-bag he had for when he had to move fast. He focused the camera quickly and took another round of shots, getting as many of the faces as he could. He’d get more when the people came by to pay their last respects at the grave. Identification would come through Facebook and online college and high school yearbooks.

  “Hello.” The voice came from behind him, neutral but authoritative.

  Heath knew at once that he’d been busted. Slowly, keeping his hands on the camera, he turned around.

  Two men, one black and one Hispanic, stood there just far enough apart that they couldn’t both be gotten easily, but they were still right there to help each other. Neither of them had their hands on their guns, but their jackets were open, and their hands were open and ready.