No Escape

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.