Angel Killer (25 page)

The NYPD has brought in three scissor lifts to allow us to look down on the scene from above. Knoll motions for me to join him on one. I climb under the railing and the operator takes us up thirty feet. A photographer on a separate lift is using a camera with an infrared lens to take pictures of Claire’s body. We have no idea what other clues or taunts the Warlock may have left behind.

“Good work with your little stunt. We could have been chasing all over the building,” says Knoll as we ascend.

“We’ll see. I could just be making things worse.” The lift comes to a stop and I have to grab the railing to keep from losing my balance.

“I ask myself that every five minutes,” replies Knoll. “But that’s why we work as a team. If one of us says something stupid, somebody else can point it out.”

“Well, don’t hesitate with me.”

“I won’t.” He says this with a half smile. It’s the first time I’ve seen his boxer face break into anything other than different degrees of serious around me.

I could tell how much he resented my presence when I was first pushed onto this case. I now realize it’s not a matter of ego for him. He just wants to get the job done right. He felt I was being maneuvered onto the team out of politics. Which was true. For the first time he’s acknowledging that I may have some value here yet. I hope I don’t blow it.

Knoll’s face tightens as he looks down at the body. “You have any kids, Blackwood?”

I’m sure he knows the answer by now but is making a polite inquiry. “No. I’m not sure if I’d make a good mother.”

“I think you’d make a great one.”

“Really?” I’ve had men tell me I was too detached, too cold. This surprises me coming from a hard ass like Knoll.

“It’s the people who worry the most about being a good parent that do their best. At least I’d like to think so.”

“You have kids?”

“Two girls and a boy. My oldest daughter is almost ready for college,” he replies.

As he looks down on Claire Nelson I can only imagine what’s going through his mind. He’s a good cop and a thoughtful person. I can sense the fear he has about not being able to protect his own children from the evil in the world. His feeling of loss has to be greater than my own.

I’ve avoided long-term romantic attachments for one reason or another all my life. I’ve been in love, but never so much so that I was willing to take the kind of emotional risks that go with getting married or having children. I tell myself that someday I will when I meet the right guy. Someday. That seems like a thousand years from now. Unfortunately, biology isn’t as patient. Beyond that, I wonder if my own analytical nature and mixed-up childhood have made it impossible for me to make that leap beyond logic and just go with my feelings. I could have met the right guy a dozen times for all I know.

My feminist side hates to acknowledge it, but when some women turn thirty they really do change. Maternal instincts, the urge to nest, go full bore. In a way I kind of hope these feelings will change me and my way of seeing things. Would I have given Terrence another chance? Will I open myself up to other opportunities? Will I let people in?

On some level I deeply understand the desire to turn off the rational part of one’s mind and follow emotion. Sadly, this is also why so many people want to believe the Warlock is real. To them, he’s the proof of the supernatural. He’s evidence that there is such a thing as fate and that God or the universe has a plan for us.

But this is all just a trick. An illusion of mystery. The murdered girl, bleeding on the asphalt below us, is just a prop in the Warlock’s twisted play.

In this moment I think I understand something about him. He’s analytical. He’s logical. He’s not a believer in anything other than himself.

He wants to believe. He envies that ability for others to let go. He wants to embrace emotion and religious belief. He may even have convinced himself on some level that he does believe these things, but deep down he doesn’t. He’s manufacturing evidence because he sees none. God isn’t a living entity for him, so he’s trying to pretend he is God.

It’s an unsettling insight for me. I call myself religious and go to church from time to time, but I know deep down, I’m not really a believer. Although I keep trying.

“Haven’t found the right one?” asks Knoll, breaking me out of my thoughts.

“One?”

“Partner,” he replies, using the politically correct term. Does he think I might be a lesbian? Wouldn’t be the first time.

“Not yet.” I should be thinking about Terrence. He’s probably no more than five miles from here. But when Knoll said “partner,” the person who comes to my mind isn’t one I’d like to admit. It’s Damian.

Forensics is about to move Claire’s body. They’ve picked up the feathers and placed white chalk marks around the ones close to her.

“So how did she get here?” Knoll says, turning his mind back to the present.

I knew this question was coming the moment I saw the still image on the live feed back at Quantico. “She was dumped by one of the cars that passed by. Maybe a hole cut in the trunk.” It’s my only theory at the moment. I know it’s weak. But it’s all I’ve got.

Knoll nods as he tries to puzzle out what I just said.

The glittering lights are surreal. Broadway marquees, corporate logos, giant video screens and, in the middle of it all, a naked angel who appears to have fallen to earth. I shake my head as the news ticker rolls by, describing what just happened. Then I notice something new. They attribute it to “the Angel Killer.”

I ask Knoll, “Angel Killer?”

“Our choice of words. Dr. Chisholm decided it’s time we shifted the narrative away from the Warlock and take control of the message. We’ve never officially called him ‘the Warlock.’ I think this is better.”

I like it a lot. “I agree. It puts a face on the victims. Maybe it adds to the mystery if we call her an angel, but I like the idea of making all the victims angels.” I catch another headline out of the corner of my eye. I try to read it again before it changes.

I turn to Knoll, confused.

His voice is apologetic. “The tabloids decided to run with that. We’ve asked them not to. But it’s too late. I’m sorry. The press got some pretty good photos of you when we arrived here. People have already made the connection.”

There goes any hope of anonymity. There are thousands of people around us in Times Square. It feels as if half of them are looking up at us on our platform. I see the long lenses of professional cameras taking photographs of me. I want to shrink and hide. I know it’s too late. It was too late before I even got here.

The ticker crawls by again. “FBI Agent Hunting Angel Killer Revealed to be Jessica Blackstar. Daughter of the Famous Magic Dynasty. Will the Witch Catch the Warlock?”

So that is how they’re going to describe this game? Me versus him? My stomach wrenches. This is not the kind of attention I wanted, nor the responsibility it puts on me in the eyes of everyone watching.

Directly in front of me, a cable news channel screen just flashes a tour poster of me in leather pants, a diamond bustier, and a twenty-year-old’s idea of a come-hither look.

Knoll watches the screen, then turns to me. “If you want to know what goes on in people’s heads, ask Chisholm. But I’ll tell you this. I’m glad this is out there. Maybe it’s a little embarrassing. But that’s not how people see it.”

I shake my head and pretend to be calmer than I am. “I don’t see how it helps. I’m just an adviser. It detracts from what we’re doing. You’re in charge of this case. Hundreds of people are working their asses off. Putting me up there is just a distraction.”

“Only if you let it be. You’ve got to look at the big picture. People want to believe this guy is real. Sick as he is. They want to think he can bring back the dead, travel through time. Now he wants them to think he can open the door to heaven and yank an angel down from the sky. We’re cops. We can find evidence and try to catch him. But when it comes to helping people see what he’s really doing, he’s winning. I think that’s why we need you out here in front.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re one of the good guys. Forget the witch part. All people see is a good-looking woman from a famous family who gave it up to be a cop. That makes you a hero. And right now we need to remind people of the difference between good and evil when they get caught up in all these bullshit miracles. We got our own magician to take down this asshole.”

He sounds a lot like Ailes. Part of me wonders if he has been talking to Ailes and Chisholm about leaking this to the press. It’s cynical, but I wouldn’t put it past them. The hero stuff sounds a lot like Chisholm’s psy-ops babble.

It’s frustrating. It’s the last thing I want. I’ve had enough of the spotlight. I gave it up for a reason. I just want to help people. People like Claire, Denise, Swanson, and even Elsie.

But then I look down at Claire and realize I’m being selfish. She’d give anything to be where I am. Alive. Maybe Chisholm is right.

Forget about my personal issues coming to the foreground. I need to do what I do best: figure things out.

It’s all about the trick.

The trick . . .

I see how the Warlock set this up.

I know what he did.

“Baking a cake in a spectator’s hat.” I say the words out loud.

“What?” Knoll gives me a confused look.

A
GOOD MAGIC EFFECT
plays upon the things you take for granted. It takes place in a situation in which you think I have little control. We’re sitting in your living room with a deck of cards. I ask you to pick one. I rip off a corner and hand the piece to you. I then take the remainder of your card and set it on fire in the fireplace. After you watch the ashes finish burning I point to the drink in your hand. You notice that one of the ice cubes in your glass has a folded card frozen inside it. It’s the card you picked, minus the corner you’re holding. You’ve been holding the drink all along.

It’s your house, your glass, you even poured the drink. You understand how conceivably I could fold a card and freeze it inside an ice cube, but not how I could have done all of that while we’re sitting on your couch chatting.

Instead of a sealed envelope in a safe standing onstage, I’ve done this in a natural setting. There were no trick boxes or smoke machines. I did this in your environment. Putting a dead girl in the middle of Times Square required the same kind of misdirection as getting that ice cube into your drink. Only the scale was different.

Getting it there also involved something that looked natural. The method reminded me of the trick I just mentioned to Knoll.

I watch the street beyond the barrier blocking the bystanders from the crime scene. Cars pass and try to see what’s in plain sight. What’s right in front of us? Lots of yellow flashes by.

“A taxi,” I explain. Half the cars here are taxis. If I wanted to be invisible, I’d use a taxi. “Probably a minivan. Hollowed-out floor. There’s an old trick where you’d bake a cake in a spectator’s hat. Never mind. I think that’s what he used. A taxi. Not a hat. Sorry. She was dropped from underneath and then concealed in the middle of the street for a few seconds.”

Knoll looks at the cars on the other side of the barrier. “What about the explosion? People swear they saw her fall. And the dent in the ground?” He points to Claire. “Her face sunk a two-inch hole in the pavement.”

“Are potholes rare in this town? Maybe he used a shape charge. Or he could have made the hole himself a few hours before by soaking the asphalt with gasoline. I made that mistake once trying to fill the lawnmower. That would soften it up.”

I’m about to ask to be lowered down to see another replay of the first tourist video when I notice that it is playing on a loop on one of the monitors in Times Square.

My college media professor would flip his lid at how meta all this is. I’m in the middle of a crime scene, in the middle of one of the most famous tourist spots on the planet, and I’m surrounded by news images of what just happened.

The video shows several cars, most of them taxis, passing in front of the camera. A taxi minivan drives by, and a second later there’s an explosion behind it. White feathers fall to the ground and the camera pans down to discover Claire’s body. It looks like she falls, but we don’t actually see her fall, just the aftermath, an explosion of white.

Knoll is squinting, trying to catch the drop. “I don’t know. The closest cab was at least five yards away. It doesn’t look like she was dumped. People would have thought he ran her over.”

The video is grainy and out of focus. All of the ones we’ve seen so far have been. Nobody was pointing their camera directly at the street while it happened. There are no cars behind that last cab, so we don’t have a witness to tell us what they saw from behind.

This is one of the most public locations in the world. Yet, like a theater stage, nobody is looking where they should be until after the illusion happens. To get past the misdirection I have to think of method. I have to stop for a moment and ask myself how I would do it. Not how he did it.

There are two parts to the deception: dropping her body and then creating the illusion she fell. The feathers in the air could be propelled by an explosion. A small charge could send a bundle into the air where it would explode. Wrapped in black tissue paper, done fast enough, none of the cameras would catch it.

“Did forensics pick up any explosive residue?” I ask.

“No. The NYPD bomb squad was on the scene in minutes. They swabbed everything. Negative.”

I rap my fingernails on the edge of the metal rail and try to visualize the explosion as it looked from where I’m standing. For some of my pyrotechnics, I’d use an air cannon powered by a cylinder of CO2. Obviously, nothing like that was found around her body. The bomb squad would be all over it. Was it hidden somehow?

Most performers paint their little boxes of flash powder or smoke black. Grandfather taught me to always keep a couple of cans of paint on hand to match the color of the stage. This helps them blend in. It hides the fact that the smoke comes from a physical prop. It makes it magical.