Magician (17 page)

“Roland, this is Tiller. I’m across from 6134 Highland, and I am looking at a black van. Fain was driving it. He has entered the building. As soon as he comes out, I’m going to continue following him. I will call you back when I get a chance.”

He hung up and exited the phone booth. He slid into the car. Still no sign of Fain. Tiller wondered what he had in that warehouse.

Maybe a few young victims. I’ll have to keep my eyes open around this guy. He may look like a big lummox, but he’s pretty damn quick
.

Tiller looked at his watch. It sure was taking Fain a long time, whatever he was up to. He picked up the program and read the names.

Well, there’s no use going to this thing now. The cat is all but in the bag. Now just to work out the fine points on how to apprehend the big bastard.

A sudden doubt began to nag Tiller’s mind.
What if he knows I’m out here. What if he isn’t just cautious. What if he made me back at the Oak Room. Maybe he saw me before I saw him.

It was possible that Fain had made him. Tiller hadn’t actually tried to follow anyone in years. What if Fain had exited the back of the warehouse and made his escape? That would be a catastrophe. All of the work they had done for nothing, because he, Tiller, had screwed up.

Maybe i should call the cops.

Nothing doing. I’m too close. By the time they got here he’d be long gone, and I’d be the one they took in for questioning. I’m going to have to go take a look.

With an air of grim resignation, Tiller climbed out of the car again. As he did so, the van began to move. It rolled slowly down the front of the warehouse, its engine off, and turned lazily into the alley beside it. Tiller stood gaping, unsure how to react.

There’s no one in the damned thing. How could it move? Maybe Fain accidentally left it out of gear.

Suddenly, it came to him that something was very, very wrong, and that maybe his lurking fear had just been confirmed. And maybe some others, that he had not dared to consciously think, as well.

I took my eyes off the place for a couple of seconds, that’s all Fain needed. Remember, sleight of hand is what he’s best at. Misdirection.

Tiller ran across the street, his hand sliding of its own accord inside his jacket, and the snub nose .38 that rode there in its holster. Whatever he had told Deputy Cale notwithstanding, there was no way Detective Sergeant Amos Tiller was going hunting for a psychopath without some heat.

He put the gun in his pocket, with it still in his hand, and crossed to the alley. The van had moved to about halfway down, and slowed to a stop. The hairs were standing up on Tiller’s neck. He had a creepy feeling that he couldn’t shake. He felt eyes watching him, and he believed the owner of those eyes knew everything he was thinking.

Don’t do it
! Y
ou shouldn’t do this alone!

Tiller ran up to the van and peered inside. There was no one in the cab. He knew he was committed, now. Any second Fain could come out of the warehouse door,
would
come out, and it was all confusing and not going right.

He’s in the back. Open the back. Now.

It was an old style van, a 1970’s Chevy, with no windows in its black sides. His hand reached for the handle. The blood was racing through his ears.

Oh, God help me, this is getting out of hand.

His left hand was trembling as he reached for the handle on the back door. The gun in his right hand gave him little confidence. He turned it suddenly, and yanked the door open, and jumped to the side, gun out.

Conrad, the redheaded dwarf who’d been singing at the Proscenium Ballroom, sat between two speakers, laughing. He was pointing at Tiller and laughing uproariously.

Tiller faltered for a second, and lowered his gun.

“What . . . how did you . . . ” And suddenly he knew he’d made his second big mistake. Something struck him from behind. As he faded into the darkness he realized it was a fist; the fist of someone very big, and very strong.

Chapter 22

I knew that I had been sitting in the cell for hours. It was impossible to know for certain how many, but I estimated it was anywhere from one to three in the morning, now. They had taken my watch, and there was no wall clock.

They had also taken my shoes, my belt, and anything else that they found the least bit interesting. The jail reminded me of ones I’d seen previously only on television, old-fashioned, complete with vertical round iron bars you could look out through, and see the other cells.
 

The cell across the corridor from my own was occupied by a man sleeping so soundly on a cot, that I couldn’t even hear him breathe.

The door opened suddenly, and a tall, respectable looking man entered. Deputy Cale walked behind him, and regarded me smugly. I focused on the older man. He had short, iron gray hair that showed from beneath his gray suede cowboy hat, which he now removed. He was wearing a western-style shirt, complete with a six-pointed silver star that read “Sheriff” above the left pocket. He looked every inch the mythical Western sheriff. When he spoke, the impression was reinforced.

“Mr. Longville,” he said pleasantly in a deep baritone voice that bespoke of authority. He grabbed a wooden chair from along the wall, dragged it over in front of my cell and took a seat.

“I’m Sheriff Larry Payne. How are you doing?” He asked without irony, and calmly waited for my response.

“Well, Sheriff, I’m in jail.”

The man grinned for about half a second and put his hat back on, and tilted it back on his head. “So you are.”

“So I am.”

“Maybe this will teach you about interfering in official police business,” Deputy Cale snarled.

“What’s this idiot talking about? Interfering with
what
investigation?”

“Why you—” Cale growled, murder in his eyes.

“Easy there, Cale,” Sheriff Payne interjected. He calmly turned back to me.

 
“You too, Longville. You’ve been asking some pretty strange questions around town. Getting folks excited. Questions about girls disappearing and so forth.”

“I am involved in a perfectly legitimate investigation, regarding the disappearance of a young girl from Birmingham. There’s nothing strange about that. And as far as I know, making people nervous isn’t against the law.”

“Birmingham, eh?” Sheriff Payne rocked back on the two rear legs of his chair. “Nice city. I was there back in the eighties. Still a big steel town with lots of big-boned good old boys and good looking women?”

“Not really. The women are still just as pretty, but the rest has changed. Now it’s a bunch of Internet companies and yuppies in SUVs.”

“Ah. Like every damn place nowadays.”

“I’m sorry, Sheriff, but I don’t see where I’ve broken any laws.”

Payne sat rocking on the legs of his chair, then leaned forward, his hand out.

“Do you know this man?” There was a photo in Payne’s hand.

I took it, and looked at it for a moment. It was the landlord from Viscount Apartments. Someone had hog-tied him and beaten him to a pulp, and left him in his own bathtub to drain. His face was a mass of red tissue. I recognized him from his clothes. He couldn’t have been killed too long after Tiller and I saw the man.

“Yeah, I know who he is.”

“He was found about three hours ago. You have to understand, Mr. Longville. I have it from reliable sources that you and Mr. Tiller were talking with this man shortly before he was discovered dead.”

“So what? You think that we killed him?”

“Mr. Longville, no one is accusing you of murdering this man. But I think you realize that the man you’re looking for might have. I’d like to know more about your investigation. You’re a private investigator from Birmingham, and that’s fine with me. You want to conduct an investigation in the state of Arizona, that’s fine with me, too. But now a man is dead, so things are no longer fine with me. We have to talk.”

“We’re talking. What kind of information did you have in mind?”

“Well, Mr. Longville, from what Deputy Cale here has learned from certain people you spoke with, and as you just confirmed, your investigation centers around a little girl that’s missing. That, too, interests me considerably.”

“Why is that so interesting?”

“Well, to be up front with you, we’ve got a missing girl or two around here.”

“Well, Sheriff Payne, I’d really like to help you, I really would, but there’s something I need from you.”

“I’ll see what I can do to oblige.”

“For starters, I’d like to get out of this cell.”

Sheriff Payne looked up at Cale. “Josh, why don’t you go find us something to eat over at the diner. It’s early, I could go for some eggs.”

Cale opened his mouth to protest, but Payne silenced him with a shake of his head. Cale shrugged angrily and stalked out.

Payne stood up, removed a key ring from his pocket, selected a key, and unlocked the cell door. “This is the kind of thing we should talk over in my office.”

I followed Payne out through the lobby, where two other deputies sat at desks. One was typing, the other playing solitaire.

“Another busy day at the office?” I directed the question to Payne as he took a seat in front of the Sheriff’s desk.

“There’s not usually a lot of crime in Douglas, Mr. Longville. Practically none this early in the day. We like it like that, here. Which brings us to the present problem.” Payne reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a folder. He slid it across the desk toward me. I sat and looked at it for a moment. “Go ahead, have a look at what’s inside.”

I think I know already,
said my little inner voice. I picked it up anyway, and opened it. My blood turned to ice. I recognized her face immediately; it was one of the girls in Samson Fain’s photo album. She was the little girl with the locket. She looked a lot like Georgia Champion. But she was different—she’d been found. Or what was left of her.

There were photos inside, two batches of them, in separate envelopes. The first envelope held photos of the girl alive, smiling, doing the things children do: laughing, running, playing. The other photos were different. They were photos of a rotting corpse that someone had stumbled upon, in some strange, deserted place.

The body was naked, and had been left in an obscene position, her rear end high in the air, her face forced down into the dirt. I looked through all of the pictures silently and laid them back on the desk. I wondered how much Payne had seen in my face. Enough, probably.

“The killer always leaves them in sexual positions. He hasn’t ever left two bodies in the same position. None of the victims have been over fourteen.”

“How did she die?”

“Asphyxiation. Most likely, she was strangled while she was asleep; there are no injuries that depict a struggle. But she was strangled manually. She died somewhere else, and the body was transported post-mortem, and arranged the way it was found. The livor mortis is in the buttocks, see? She was lying on her back when she died. Also, there was some warming, indicated the body had been transported, most likely in a car trunk. There was also evidence of sexual activity.”

I closed my eyes for a moment, and again saw the big bruises Samson Fain’s hands had left on a nameless little black girl, twenty years ago.

“Sorry, partner, this is rough stuff.”

 
“I’ve seen worse,” I said at last.

“Doing private work?” Payne raised an eyebrow.

“Homicide. Five years.”

“Yeah, I sort of had you figured for an ex-cop.”

“Where were they abducted from?”

“That’s the damnedest thing. They all disappeared from places with plenty of people around. Places like a schoolyard, a church cookout, and girl-scout meetings. And at no place did we have a single witness.”

“How many have there been?” I asked. I had yet to look up.

“Six, that we are more or less sure about, in the last three years. There are more girls missing in the area. Some of them, we think might be because of him. Some, I think, are a little too old, but you never know. There are always runaways, and non-custodial parental abductions, that muddy the waters.”

I looked up now and met Payne’s cool gaze. “You say six. I think we’d better make that seven.”

“So. You figure this is your man?”

“Let’s just say that I can make you think so, too. There are many similarities.”

Payne leaned forward and lowered his voice. “So, tell me. How long ago did the girl in your case go missing?”

“Three and a half years ago, this month.”

Payne whistled between his teeth. “So, he packs it in, leaves Birmingham, and comes west. The time frame sure fits. And he’s been at it all of this time.”

“And, from what I know, he isn’t likely to stop.”

“But why did he come all of the way out here?”

“He’s a clown, or was. Now, I think, he’s a magician. Your area has, of late, become very attractive to people in those lines of work, especially if they follow the carnival circuit. My guess is that there is some connection we haven’t discovered yet, that attracted him initially. Maybe he stayed because he felt he could blend in here.”