Magician (20 page)

There was digging equipment in the back of the van with me and Tiller. Two shovels, and I knew what they were for. The bastard was going to make us dig our own graves.

Apparently he’s done this before. Knows how to plan. I just hope he’s made a mistake.

My eyes tried to close, and I searched within myself for whatever strength remained.

Close your eyes and you die. You may die anyway.

I tried to sit up, but could not. I was tied in the same fashion as Tiller, with a tight length of rope linking the bonds around my neck to that around my ankles. Movement was painful, and cut off my air. I lay back and tried to concentrate. And then my heart almost stopped.

She was standing there, smiling at me. She looked like the police age progression photo had looked. But different, wise beyond her years.

Georgia Champion. She winked at me, and smiled. And then Fain slammed the door and she was gone.

“Wait . . . ” I tried to shout, but the sound died in my throat. The van’s engine roared to life, and suddenly we were moving. I bent double, and turned so that I could see Fain. He began speaking aloud, while driving jarringly over the bumpy ground.

“I really have to hand it to you, whoever you are. I mean, you are
good.
Here I am, safely hidden away from the world, and you go digging in the past and come up with the one mistake I made. Very good. Or possibly, you’re nuts. Me, I would have brought more help. No offense, but your friend is sort of old and slow.”

Fain held up his hand, so that I could see. Between his thumb and forefinger, he held the post card that he had sent Viv so long ago. He had apparently searched them both very carefully.

“The police put their best people on the Champion thing, and I have to give them their props, they were very thorough. But they never questioned little old me. Because I wasn’t there, remember? So it cooled off, and I drifted out of Birmingham. I came way out here, and thought that I’d made the proverbial clean getaway. And what do you know? I stay here for three years, pretty much out of sight, and just when I am really ready to reestablish myself, here you two come, and muck everything up. I guess nobody’s safe nowadays.”

With a flick of his wrist he flipped the postcard out of the vent window.

“Abracadabra!” He sang, in a freakish echo of Tiller. “That’s the way of the world,” he went on, his voice becoming heavy and sad. “Things vanish. Postcards, guys like me. Little girls. And you and your friend. They all vanish, and none of them are never seen again.”

All the while Fain spoke, we were heading somewhere out into the barren desert. I had the feeling my time was running out.

Fain chuckled giddily. “By the way, since this means that I’ll probably have to be moving along again, thanks for the cabbage.” He nodded toward the dash, where Horace Champion’s money lay in the manila envelope. “Quite a haul. Couldn’t have done it without yah.”

I was fighting my grogginess. The shovel. Maybe I could cut my ropes with the edge of the shovel.

Keep him busy. Keep him talking.

“What . . . what did you do with Georgia Champion?” I asked, and my voice sounded like rusty bedsprings.

“Ah, the Champion girl. My little princess. Such a tragedy. The old man, he doesn’t have a clue.” Fain’s voice changed, became lower. It was unlike any voice I had ever heard. There was something inhuman about it.

“What happened to Georgia is something neither you or the old man can ever understand. I alone understand that. I won’t waste my breath trying to explain it to you.”

I was rubbing my hands up and down on the shovel’s edge. It felt pretty dull.

“Was she . . . I saw her back . . . there . . . ”

Fain threw back his head and let out a long howl of laughter.

“Saw her? You really
are
a nutcase, mister.”

The van turned off the rough bramble onto harder ground. A few high weeds scraped against the windows. Some sort of structure was up ahead, a platform on high supports, built on a small hill. The road ran around and up to it. Fain was taking them up there.

“This is my other little hideaway. That’s another thing I’m good at, finding places off the beaten path. That’s what this whole thing, me leaving and coming out here, has been about.”

I squinted up at Fain. I felt my strength slowly returning, but my bonds were quite tight. There was no way I was going to cut through them with the dull shovel.

“Misdirection?” I asked the back of Fain’s bald head.

“Misdirection.” Fain repeated, with a note of finality.

Fain stopped the van suddenly and stared straight ahead. “Well, this is the place.”

He sat silently for a moment, took a deep breath, and reached and got something from beneath his feet. He got out, and came around to the rear of the van and unlocked the door.

The light flooded in, as Fain yanked the door open.

Fain was holding a large hunting knife.

I held my hands up, as much as the bonds would allow.

“Wait . . . you took the girl. How did you do it? How did you get out of there with her?”

“So you want to know how I did it. Everybody wants to know how I do my tricks. I’m pretty good, huh? But I guess you’re pretty good, too, because you and your friend found me. I hate to dwell on that, but after all of this time! Imagine my surprise.”

Fain looked away, pursed his lips for a second, then smiled and looked down at me.

“It was easy. Most tricks are, once you know the secret,” he said with a strange light in his eyes. “Georgia and I, we had an arrangement. She was going to meet me. She had another set of shoes ready.”
 

He saw something in my eyes and laughed.

“Don’t believe me, eh? No matter. It’s true. We had a relationship. It was something you wouldn’t understand. She was the one I’d been looking for. So I planned it with her. I told her I would take her away from there. She wasn’t happy.” He seemed rapt by his own voice. I struggled desperately to free myself from the bonds. It was no use. They were very tight.

“You were dressed as Jokey, I know that much. You knew he always went to take his insulin around noon. Maybe you were watching. But how did you get out?”

Samson Fain laughed again.

“Yes, You are very good indeed. I had long since mastered old Joe’s make-up, and his costume. He was an old fool. They all were, they should never have gotten rid of me. Me! I was the best, a hell of a lot better than those old losers. As far as the Champion house that day, you’re right. I just walked right in. All of the kids were sitting in that little side room, watching television. I was scared out of my mind, but no one said a word. There was one little blond boy I’ll always remember. He locked eyes with me as I came in, and I was sure I was busted. But he turned and went right back to watching the TV. I could have shit my pants.”

“How did you get her out of there? Did you carry the body out?”

“Don’t be an asshole. She walked out on her own. I told you. There was no abduction. She changed shoes and walked out. Took her picture right outside the door. All in two minutes. She wanted to come, you understand? That’s all it took, two minutes, tops.”

“Not true,” I said. I suddenly understood Fain’s real need, why he did what he did. It was because no one wanted him, and he wanted them to. It was important for him to make someone believe.

“She didn’t go with you. You lied to her, and lured her outside. Then you knocked her out. What did you use, chloroform?”

Fain shook his head, and his face darkened, the beast coming back to the surface now. “You smart son of a bitch. Yeah, okay, I told her I had a special gift for her outside. I gave her the flower, the ring. That’s why she came out; that’s why she sent the little boy away. I told her it was a secret. Kids will do anything when you tell them that. She had changed her shoes; she was following my instructions. I chloroformed her after the picture was taken, and slid her into this very van. Right where you’re lying right now. I was in and out of the Champion house, though. No one knew anything, and I had what I came for. Me and the little girl, gone forever.”

“And you do that with the other ones. You lie to them to get them to help you. That’s your secret. You’re no magician.”

“Ah. Temper, temper. You know a lot. More than anyone else ever has. Congratulations. But now it dies with you.”

“But what happened to her? Where is Georgia Champion?”

“That’s enough. Some things, you don’t ever get to know.” He reached in and dragged me from the van, and I went down on my knees in the hot sand. Fain reached down and ripped open my collar and stuck the blade of the hunting knife to my throat. The point caught on the steel chain I wore around my neck. From it dangled a silver poker chip, pierced by a single bullet hole.

“Now what in the world is this?” Fain asked in a bemused voice. He toyed with the charm, picking it up by the bullet hole with the point of the knife.

“That’s my good luck charm,” I answered hoarsely.

“Too bad for you I’m not superstitious,” Fain said with a smirk.

Suddenly blood sprayed into my eyes, and Fain fell to his knees and flopped over onto his side, a large gash in his right temple. Tiller was standing over him, a shovel in his hands, the ropes slack around his wrists.

“Abracadabra,
asshole,” he said weakly. “My big trick,” he said, and his smile was so weak it was frightening.

Fain was lying very still.

“Tiller. Give me that knife.”

With a groan, Tiller picked up Fain’s knife and handed it to me. I grunted and leaned against the van, scraping the blade edge against my bonds. Tiller appeared to lose consciousness again. The knife was very sharp, and in a few seconds I had the ropes around my wrists sliced in two. There were deep furrows in my wrists; my left hand felt like it was asleep. I took the knife in my right hand and sliced the bonds binding my feet.

I grabbed Tiller and dragged him to the front of the van.

“Come on, Tiller. We’ve got to get out of here.”

I pushed Tiller up into the van, and slammed the doors and ran around to the driver’s door. The keys were gone.

“Damn it.”

I went back around to where Fain lay, and rifled his pockets quickly. I found the keys in the front pocket of his pants. Away in the desert, I saw a plume of dust. It was Conrad, in the four-wheel drive. He might be bringing others. We had to get out of there.

I climbed into the Van and started the engine. It roared to life. I pulled out and down the ramp, and headed out into the open desert. I didn’t know where I was going, and I didn’t care.

“We . . . have to get Fain . . . ” Tiller mumbled.

“Sheriff Payne and his men can collect Fain.”

“Where . . . ? Where are we going?”
 

“Don’t know,” I panted.

I’m getting the hell away from here.

I spun the wheel wildly a few times to escape running over rocky outcroppings in the dirt. I kept looking behind us. The four-wheel drive had gone up to the mine entrance, where Fain lay knocked out. It wouldn’t be long and they’d be coming after the two of us.

* * *

Deputy Cale was supremely pissed. He had lost track of Longville the day before when he’d been called to move some escaped cattle off the road. Since then, he’d periodically driven the roads in search of the small blue rental sedan that he’d seen them in a few days earlier. He hadn’t had any luck. So when the call came over the radio that a motorist had reported a blue sedan stuck in a gully, Cale had jumped at the chance to answer the call. It wasn’t what he expected, though. The motorist who had reported the car had been westbound on a dirt access that ran away from Highway 191 at a right angle. The car was several miles out in the rough. Whoever was driving had driven away from the main road.

Cale walked around the wrecked car. It was up on its side, so whoever had been driving had exited by climbing up and out the passenger door, and then . . . He squatted and looked closely at the ground. They had walked out through the desert.

“Now who would do something like that?” Cale asked the empty air.

Or Why?

He walked further out into the sand. There was another set of tracks there. Maybe Longville and his friend had been following someone.

“Baker 11 to S.O,” Cale called into his hand held radio.

He’d call it in, then follow those tracks. And then, by God, he’d get to the bottom of this whole damned mess once and for all.

Chapter 28

I had no idea where I was headed. I was driving as fast as I dared, but the four-wheel drive had already appeared in the rearview mirror and was growing rapidly larger.

I looked over at Tiller. His eyes were open, but his head bobbed with every bump we went over. He was in bad shape, that much was obvious.

“Hang in there, Tiller. I’ll get you to a hospital.”

The rear view mirror was telling me a story I didn’t want to hear; the Red Four-wheel drive was almost upon us.
 

I tried to zigzag.