Angel Killer (26 page)

What if he hid Claire’s body and the cannon long enough to create a sense of distance? Time can be used to create an illusion. If my empty left hand grasps thin air, then makes a tossing motion toward a glass in my right hand and you hear a clink, it sounds like I made a coin appear. Your brain connects the action with the sound, but the coin was hidden in my right hand all along, holding the glass. If you’d been watching my right hand, you’d notice the fingers were at an odd angle, possibly hiding something. Maybe the Warlock used a kind of camouflage that only needed to work for a few seconds?

I direct Knoll’s attention to what I’m seeing in my head. “Look at the area where she appeared and then the street on either side. Notice that she’s in between two crosswalks? They’re nice and bright while the unpainted street she’s on is dark in comparison. He could have dropped her off behind the cab, but have her covered by some kind of fabric that looks like the asphalt. It only has to be there for a few seconds. In the video it looks like his exhaust is kind of thick too.”

“What happened to the covering?”

“A long roller blind attached to the cab. After the cab goes, say, fifteen feet away, it retracts. Probably has an air cannon at the end of it. That gets pulled into the underside of the taxi. We get our explosive-free explosion and our revelation all at once.”

Knoll scratches his bald head. “Sounds complicated.”

“Imagine if I covered you in a black cloth and threw you out of my moving van onto a dark street in the middle of the night. Only the cloth has a cable running back to the van. After a few yards I yank it back up. If someone is walking their dog, what would it look like?”

“Like I just appeared in the street. But this is a brightly lit intersection. Someone would have noticed . . .”

“Would they? We have thick exhausts, steam grates, almost black asphalt, and a thousand bright objects above us. All the people here are either looking up at the lights or at each other. All of the video we have is amateur footage that wasn’t aimed where we wanted to see.”

Knoll’s eyes look up as he tries to visualize what I’m describing. “I don’t know.”

“Well, I think it’s a better explanation than she fell from heaven. She got here somehow. Besides, the mechanics of this method I mentioned have been used for hundreds of years. If a clockmaker could build this into a mechanical magic trick two hundred years ago, I don’t think the Warlock would have a problem. All the elements for distraction are here.” I think of how we’d use masking tape to map out a stage on the living room floor, marking out curtains, props and where to stand. The Warlock must have done something like this, dry-running the effect hundreds of times. “He only needs a second or two.”

The video replays again on the screen above us. I think Knoll is watching it this time with my explanation in mind. It’s of such low quality it’s hard to tell for certain, but my theory fits the facts. And that’s what we really need now: an explanation. Something consistent with the evidence, which gives us a place to start searching for clues and allows us to say we aren’t fooled.

Knoll is beginning to get the idea. “I guess we need to look for phantom cabs now. He had hours to ditch it. It could be hard.”

My bet is on it being impossible. He’s not going to leave us a piece of evidence that helps us prove how he did it. Part of me wonders if he was even in the cab when it happened. He could have hired a driver and rigged it with remotes. Maybe use an accomplice who has no idea what they’re really doing? Would he want to be in the driver’s seat or somewhere out here watching?

Was he already on his way to kill the girl from the Empire State Building?

W
E HAVE THEM
lower the lift so we can get out and take a walk around Times Square. A young girl, maybe sixteen, too young to be out this late, leans across the police barrier with her camera and shouts to me, “Can I take my picture with you?”

It’s embarrassing. I give Knoll a glance. He steps over to the girl and takes the camera from her. “Agent Blackwood would be happy to.” He motions for me to stand next to her.

I try to smile as he takes the photo. He hands the camera back to the excited girl. She shakes my hand and blurts out, “You’re my hero! Go get this asshole!”

I give her a polite nod and turn to follow Knoll. “That wasn’t what I was hoping for,” I reply, not hiding my frustration for feeling so ridiculous.

“It’s what we need. You’re already a hero in my house.”

Knoll takes a phone call from the state police, then fills me in on the search for the other girls. They stopped seventeen tour buses headed in different directions on the map. They found two girls who match the description. One of them at a highway rest stop a half hour beyond the Pennsylvania border on her way to Canada.

A thin smile forms on Knoll’s face as he gets the news. “I think we got her.”

KATYA VOLNICK
, a pretty blond nineteen-year-old Slovenian girl who can speak about ten words of English, was very upset with the troopers when they stopped her. She was waiting at the rest stop for the man with the contest to give her the next clue in the scavenger hunt she was on, and was angry that they might ruin her free vacation. The police tried to explain to her that she did not want the prize the man was going to give her.

It took them a half hour to find a native speaker of Slovene. Through the interpreter, Katya confirmed that she was the one in the video and following instructions from “Mikhail” via a cell phone that had been provided for her. She still had the wig in her purse.

It was a game for her. Recruited back home by an e-mail, she followed the instructions on the cell phone she was given and got to see New York. All of it for some American reality show or Internet thing, or so she was told. All she cared about was the money she was promised and the free trip to the United States.

KNOLL GIVES US
the details in the conference room at the FBI field office in Tribeca. Police tried to stake out the rest stop, but “Mikhail” never showed up.

I kick myself for not thinking of looking for tour buses sooner. We could have caught him if we hadn’t had to stop the bus at the last minute. The troopers did the right thing, but it burns me. The asshole was close. Real close. Knoll and everyone else are jubilant that we caught a break and just saved a life. I guess I am too. But we almost had him. Damn it.

After the briefing I call Ailes with the news. He’d been sleeping on a couch in the bullpen waiting for an update. I can’t remember when I had a full night’s rest either. I look like a zombie in the reflection as the tinted window exaggerates the circles under my eyes.

“That’s great news. But you sound angry, Jessica,” he tells me.

I pace the New York FBI room trying to sort things out in my head. “We could have got him. He was probably following the bus. The creep got away again.” He’s always a step ahead.

“Jessica. I think you’re missing an important detail. We saved the girl. If it hadn’t been for you, we’d never have known about her. He would have killed her and she would have vanished from history. We stopped him. That should make you feel good.”

“I know. But we didn’t save Claire. We had the information, but we couldn’t put it together in time.” I stop pacing to sit on the edge of a table and stare at a wall full of missing-persons photos. The faces look back with happy expressions, unaware of what fate has in store for them. There’s a map next to the photos with pins at locations where each of them was last.

Ailes continues, “We’re getting closer. Close enough to save at least one person. He knows the noose is getting tighter. And he probably still doesn’t know about our ace in the hole, that we’re inside the website he used to track down some of his victims. This information is putting us closer. If he tries to kill again, we might be able to be there this time.”

“If?”

“Some of Chisholm’s people think this may have been the final murder. At least for a while. If we only count them as miracles, this is the third one. Like a trinity. The first one was in the ground. The second was in the sky. The third was in heaven. It has a nice kind of symmetry to it. Doesn’t it? The Bible loves threes.”

“I think it’s wishful thinking,” I reply, perhaps a little too tersely. “I think he’s saving the best for last.” I still can’t get the five classical elements out of my mind. I used to build my show around a five-part structure. Three may be a holy number. Five offers a sense of completeness. “I think there’s going to be at least two more.”

I can hear Ailes sigh on the other end of the phone. “Yeah, maybe I do too.”

Symmetry. I roll the thought around in my head for a moment. The Warlock wants to show everyone how clever he is. Even going as far as planting little Easter eggs like the sand and the feather. Nothing is left to chance. The last two murders were revealed in carefully chosen locations. The plane appeared near where it was last seen in 1945. Claire was supposed to have died in the most public place in the world. A taunting gesture if there ever was one. The one part that doesn’t fit is the graveyard. It got our attention, but it doesn’t have the narrative of the others. It was just a cemetery. Sure, it was where his real first victim was buried. But why her and why there?

“Dr. Ailes, can you hold on a second?” I set the phone on speaker, put it down and grab some of the pins stuck to the side of the map. There’s something about the cemetery that’s odd.

I stick a pin in the town in Michigan. I push another in Fort Lauderdale and a third in New York City.

A triangle.

“Dr. Ailes. The last three murders form a triangle if you look at them on a map.”

He lets out a small laugh. “Jessica, any three points on a map will make a triangle. It’s getting late. You need some sleep.”

I look at the triangle in front of me. “I know. I know. But this is a pretty nice triangle.” I’m embarrassed I can’t remember the mathematical word for it. I rummage through the top drawer of a desk and find a ruler and a marker. I trace the lines of the triangle on the map. Two sides look perfectly even. “What’s the distance from Manhattan to the cemetery?”

Ailes asks me to hold and calls out to Gerald. A minute later he has the answer. “One thousand and sixty miles.”

“What’s the distance from Fort Lauderdale to Manhattan?”

There’s a long pause.

Ailes clears his throat. “Damn, about one thousand and sixty miles! Give or take. Curious. Real curious. You know, Jessica, you’re talking to three mathematicians who didn’t notice this. You may have missed your real calling. That’s a perfect triangle!”

“I’m sure one of the FBI computers would have picked it up sooner or later.” And remember what an isosceles triangle was called.

“Maybe. But only if we ask it to. Usually we only use the Data Integration and Visualization System computer when we think someone is dumping bodies randomly and can’t find a connection. Gerald is going to put these coordinates in and see what we come up with. Could be something. We might have the next location in here somewhere. Now that you’ve schooled the math teacher, go get some rest. And feel good. You saved a life today.” I sense a touch of pride in his voice.

I take a van with the other agents to the hotel where we’re checked in. We’re all tired. Some of them seem a little excited about the fact that we saved Katya. I guess they’re right to. We showed up here expecting to pick up the pieces of a murder, but we got lucky and saved someone. Barely. Still too late for Claire.

I put the keycard into the lock and kick the newspaper in front of the door across the hall. Above the fold is a high-resolution photo of Claire. In a smaller box is my photo and a headline about me, “FBI Magician on Hunt for Angel Killer.”

I can’t get away from this bullshit. I have to resist the urge to throw the paper down the hall.

Too tired to even take a bath, I just set my alarm, undress, crawl into bed, and shut my eyes. I’m still too wound-up to sleep, but if I can keep my eyes closed long enough . . .

A minute after my head hits the pillow, the phone on the nightstand rings. I answer without thinking. I should know that only one person ever calls me on actual hotel phones.

“Hello, beautiful. Seen the paper today?”

I
BOLT UPRIGHT
. Damian’s voice stirs up memories of the conversation in the director’s office about him. My reaction to Knoll asking about a “partner” makes me blush when I hear his voice. “Where are you?”

“Too far away for a cuddle, if that’s what you’re asking for.”

“Go to hell. Where are you?” Still holding the phone, I get out of bed and grab my mobile off the desk.

“Why do you care so much all of a sudden?”

“Because you’re our number one suspect after that with Faceplaced stunt you pulled.” I try to keep the conversation going as I send a text message to Knoll and the ops dispatcher in Quantico.

Damian Knight on my hotel phone. Can u trace? Room 2032.

“Can’t a citizen help out law enforcement without being made a suspect?”

“Not when they’re you,” I reply.

“I see that we were too late for that poor girl in Times Square.”

We haven’t released information about the girl we think we saved, so I keep my mouth shut.

Damian senses my hesitation. “Ah . . . I’m glad to see my money wasn’t totally wasted. He knows you’re getting close now. You probably came within just minutes of catching him. Better to save the girl first . . . I suppose.”

“How do I know this whole thing is not one of your stupid games?”

There’s a long pause. “Me? Murder is too boring. And, you know, morally wrong. I do have my version of morals. I’m also not the type that likes the attention. This Warlock, well, we all know he’s got a god complex. But gods do hate it when mortals mess with their plans.”

I speak calmly. “Damian, how can I know it’s not you?”

I have to be objective about this. Despite my gut feelings, Damian is clearly the most suspicious person in this whole thing. My stomach feels queasy at the thought that he might be playing me along, deceiving me again. That he could be a cold-blooded serial killer is too much to handle.