Angel Killer (31 page)

The first murder happened in a cemetery, hours before we cracked the code and got there. The second one took place in a more public place in Fort Lauderdale, yet nobody was watching when he dragged the plane onto the sandbar. The third murder was the most overt one of all, before thousands of people. Video of the New York City illusion is playing on the television in my room. To my frustration, it alternates with a clip of me repeating Katya’s disappearance on top of the Empire State Building. The security camera techs recorded the whole trick and made an edited tape that makes it look a lot smoother than it actually was. At Chisholm’s suggestion, this was given to the media as proof that the FBI is on top of things and not deceived by the Warlock’s stunts.

The problem is that, even with the edits, my impromptu vanish looks different. People who want to believe in the Warlock, and there are many of them on television, aren’t convinced by the demonstration. It’s the debunker’s dilemma. If you don’t replicate the exact effect, then they have reason to believe.

I shut the TV off when clips of me onstage with a white tiger start playing. Part of me knows I should call my father and grandfather and tell them not to talk to the media, but I’m really not sure I want that stress right now.

Earlier at the gas station, I’d picked up a tabloid that was floating the theory that the Warlock didn’t actually murder any of his victims. It suggests that he simply found them and arranged for a spectacular memorial. It’s full of holes and insulting to the families. But some people want him to be an antihero who really isn’t hurting anyone.

It reminds me of Hitler worship. The Web is full of idiots trying to spin his evil. It’s bad enough when serial killers get groupies who know they did it and glorify them regardless; it’s worse when less crazy people delude themselves into justifying something they want to believe in. Entire books have been written trying to claim the concentration camps never happened, all so a handful of people who still adhere to National Socialism can point to their most famous icon as a little misguided and not a genocidal monster who has come to represent pure evil.

I stare at the map in front of me as if it will reveal its secrets and the next deception will leap forth. It’s not working. Next to me is a stack of old magic books I brought to thumb through, hoping they will jar my mind.

From time to time my mind drifts to Colorado. I pull up a state map on the computer and search satellite images of the location, as if a clue will pop out at me.

Knoll and Ailes are under the impression that I might be able to see through everything and give them a heads-up to what the deception might be here. I don’t know how. I just got lucky before. The only thing I believe is that this illusion is going to be bigger than the others, and he wants us as witnesses.

Magic is a funny thing. David Copperfield flew twenty feet in the air on a television special and people barely remembered it. Five years later, David Blaine floated six inches off the ground on a magic special that looked like reality television and the world went nuts. The Blaine trick looked real. Copperfield’s looked like an illusion. Blaine never repeated the trick, while you can go see Copperfield float, just as he did on television, every night in Las Vegas.

I flip through the pages of a magic book and stop at a photo of a Chinese magician pulling umbrellas from a box. A few pages later a man and his wife are producing light bulbs by the dozen. Each prop is a theme.

If the Warlock’s crimes are a magic act, I should be able to figure out the theme. The Chloe murder was him raising the dead, bringing someone back from death. The airplane was pulling something out of the past. The angel was him sending someone down from heaven. The best guess is that he’s trying to open up different realms that embody the classical elements, water, air, wind, earth and fire, or just symbolic clues to that effect.

What other realms are there?

Chisholm’s group suggests that the Warlock might try to open up the gates of hell. Our minds are so wide-open on this, we actually had a team of researchers try to track down the remaining parts of Hitler’s corpse, and the graves of anyone else we would expect to find in “hell.”

Hell. Hell and fire. Fire is one of the remaining elements. It sounds like it might fit. I keep asking how.

My big fear is that he might send us on so many wild-goose chases, we’ll end up spread too thin. The gates of hell bring up the notion of not just fire, but also brimstone. Brimstone was an ancient word for sulfur. Of course it would turn out that Texas is one of the world’s biggest suppliers. We’ve got teams checking sulfur-processing facilities for anything unusual there.

Our minds have been bouncing around from one possibility to the next. I’m going insane with permutations. I have to hold myself back from relaying to Knoll every idea that strikes me.

I come back to the idea of hell and fire. I used to perform an illusion called the Cremation. Two muscular assistants would seal me inside a metal coffin that was then set on fire. I was supposed to escape before I burned to death. The twist was the coffin would fall open and reveal a skeleton. After the audience reacted in horror, I’d appear in the back row of the auditorium. I never liked it conceptually. I argued with my father and grandfather about the logic of the effect. Whose skeleton was it supposed to be if I was alive? It was a logical leap nobody cared about except me.

There are at least a half dozen other illusions involving fire. They split into two themes: endurance and resurrection. Walking on hot coals, surviving in an oven, putting a hot poker on your tongue all imply an invulnerability to fire.

Resurrection illusions, like the Cremation, involve a kind of rebirth. Someone gets consumed by the flames, only to reappear unharmed. A phoenix effect of sorts. There are hundreds of versions of these ideas.

For what it’s worth, I’ve already e-mailed Knoll and Ailes my thoughts on these specific concepts. I still don’t know if they fit the Warlock’s MO. He could burn down a church full of people and have them or their twins appear elsewhere and it’d still look like a trick compared with the spectacles he’s already accomplished.

He’s thinking so much bigger than we are and he wants us to know this. We’re here in Texas at his invitation: Come watch me kill.

I look out my window at the storm clouds gathering overhead and try to imagine, if anything were possible, what would he do?

What would I do?

My phone rings. It’s Knoll.

“We found the girl. And she’s alive.”

R
OSA MARTINEZ
and her mother are very confused by what’s going on. Knoll had Agent Johnson and a female agent named Keener go to the mother’s house disguised as a couple and explain the situation to avoid arousing suspicion. They took her to pick up Rosa from her high school, presumably to help tend to her ailing grandmother. The goal was to get the two of them away from the house as quickly as possible in the event the Warlock already has them under surveillance.

In the adjoining motel room, Knoll is trying to tell them what he can. Mrs. Martinez isn’t taking the news lightly that her daughter may be the next target for the serial killer she’s seen all over television. They had to take her phone away to keep her from calling a friend and ruining our cover.

I stay out of the way and focus on my maps and books in the other room. Johnson and Keener have experience talking to people in this situation. The last thing I want to do is be another face in there making things awkward.

We’ve got six other agents in the motel and three more watching the parking lot, as well as a team using the nearby Texas Highway Patrol station facilities to coordinate with all the other law enforcement agencies. I can’t think of a safer place in the world for Rosa than right here. Through the doorway I see her mother is on the verge of tears again. She keeps explaining that Rosa is a good girl and that she can’t understand why anyone would want to harm her.

While Johnson talks to her by the bed, Keener is sitting with Rosa at the table and asking if she’s spoken to anybody suspicious or noticed anyone watching her. Rosa is adamant she hasn’t. Keener wants to know if she’s been in contact with anyone online. Rosa replies that she only talks to friends she knows.

The next step will be looking through her e-mail to see if she’s telling the truth or received messages from one of our suspicious proxies. Keener takes out a computer and shows pictures of men’s faces from Faceplaced to the two of them to see if they recognize any of them. After twenty minutes there are no matches.

Knoll comes through the adjoining doorway and sits down at the table with me. He sees the maps, books and all my notes. “Anything?”

I shake my head. “Lots of ‘ifs’ but nothing stands out. He wants us to think he’s capable of the impossible.” I nod toward the other room. “What about there?”

“I don’t know if he’s made contact yet. We’ll check phone records and texts. He might just have singled her out and be waiting for the right moment. Or he might not be after Rosa at all. He could be a thousand miles away and laughing at us. Maybe this is all a sick joke.”

“Maybe. I still can’t shake the idea that he wants us here for a reason, not just to misdirect us. At least it seems that the next evolution of this game is to play it right with us here. The angel’s eyes were an invitation.” I nod to the other room. “I can’t think he expected us to find her.”

“Yeah, I hope so,” replies Knoll.

“Anything from Colorado?”

“No. The point there didn’t give us a nice match like the town here did. We have our field office looking, though. And we don’t have a potential victim like we do here.”

“Yes, but unless he plans on leaving that point of the pentagram unfinished, there’s something there. And if everything is meant to escalate, then that’s going to be the biggest spectacle yet.”

“I know. I know. Hopefully we can catch him here.” Knoll draws a circle around the town on the map with his finger. “We’ve got things pretty locked down inside the zone. I don’t know if he’d be able to get in or out without us seeing him. He seems to want to be close by when things happen.”

“But he keeps getting further away. He probably didn’t stand around and watch the reaction to the angel killing.”

“He knew that would be televised,” replies Knoll.

“And this? If he wants us here, he’ll have no problem calling the news in if he wants it covered.”

“True.”

Keener walks in with Rosa. She looks scared, but calmer than her mother. She still seems in shock.

“Mind if Rosa sits with you guys? Johnson and I need to talk to Rosa’s mom about some grown-up stuff.”

Knoll pulls out a chair for her. “I’m going to go check out the snack machine. You want anything, Rosa?”

“A Sprite?” Her words sound frightened. She sits down and looks at the books and maps. “What’s all that?”

Keener shuts the adjoining door so she can ask Rosa’s mother some of the questions they don’t want Rosa to hear.

“I’m just trying to figure things out.” I set my pen down and smile at her.

“You look like the magician lady that works for the FBI.”

I’d taken off the glasses. I put a finger to my lips. “Let’s keep that a secret.”

Rosa smiles. “Sure. You’re very pretty. Can I use your bathroom? I haven’t gone since geography.”

“Of course.” They’d pulled her out of school and rushed her over here. Lord knows what the past hour has been like for her.

While Rosa uses the restroom I clear the table of the books and maps. I don’t know how much we want her knowing, although there isn’t much point to hiding who I am from her. Without the glasses, the disguise is half as effective.

In the other room I can hear Rosa’s mother explaining the family history. Where the father is and all the other awkward details we don’t like to tell strangers.

I set the books aside and realize something about Rosa’s behavior strikes me a little odd. She seems a little too anxious, and not just because of everything going on. She reminds me of myself when I’d tell my father a lie.

I step over to the bathroom door to ask if she’s okay.

The water is running.

I can hear her whispering.

She’s talking to somebody in a hushed voice.

She has a phone.

M
Y GUT IMPULSE
is to knock on the door but I stop myself. If I pound on the door, that will tell whoever is on the other line that we know she’s talking to them. It’s probably just a boyfriend, but we can’t take any chances. We’re better off not alerting them, just in case . . .

I gently knock on the door to the adjoining room. Johnson cracks it open. I put my finger to my lips and point to my ear, telling him to listen. He nods and leaves the door slightly ajar.

I sit back down and pretend to read a book. A minute later Rosa emerges from the bathroom. I spot the bulge in her back pocket where she has the mobile phone. She takes the chair next to me and looks at what I’m reading.

“Heard you talking in there. Boyfriend?” I say it without looking up, as if it’s the most normal thing. Just two girls making small talk.

Rosa looks over her shoulder at the door. From her angle it still looks closed. She whispers to me. “Mom doesn’t know. She’d have a cat. I met him a few months ago at church camp.”

Please don’t let it be a counselor. I’ve heard enough horror stories about sex offenders using religious camps as an opportunity to prey on children whose parents think they’re in a safe place.

“Is he cute?” I ask.

Rosa nods her head. “Yeah.”

“Older?”

Rose looks over her shoulder again, then leans in. “Just a little.”

My stomach turns. “How old?”

“He just turned eighteen. But I’m sixteen. Mom won’t let me date anyone more than a year older than me.”

I feel a wave of relief as I realize we’re not talking about some pederastic counselor. Eighteen is well below our profile. Even an older man who could pass for that probably wouldn’t fit. We’ll still need to check on it, though, just to be safe.