The Magician Murders
Page 8
“What does that mean?”
Sam made a sound that was closer to a growl than a laugh. “It means, he booked the conference and the plane flight months before you were scheduled to return to Quantico for training. It means someone flew to Toronto and attended that conference under his name.”
“Someone.”
“I’m not convinced either way. I’d like to see some event photos featuring everyone’s favorite mad scientist and amateur artist.”
“That doesn’t seem likely.”
“Jonnie’s on her way to Canada now.”
“The conference must be over.”
“Yes. The conference is over, but Kyser is currently MIA. So Jonnie’s going to meet with the organizers in an attempt to verify whether he was ever there or not.”
Jason thought it over unhappily. “If my attacker wasn’t Kyser, who the hell was it? I can’t believe Shepherd or Barnaby would come after me in such a crude, mob hit kind of way.”
Sam raised his shoulders.
“Where does that leave us?” Jason persisted.
“We’re pursuing every avenue.”
“Pursuing every avenue? You’re kidding, right?”
Sam did not look like he was kidding. He said, “It’s not a fast process.”
“Okay, I do understand that. But at the same time, I can’t remain on sick leave indefinitely.”
Sam was unimpressed. “It hasn’t been a week. You’re still on painkillers.”
True. No arguing there.
Jason opened his mouth, but his cell phone rang. He felt around for it, and Sam’s phone also began to ring. They looked at each other.
Jason found his phone and clicked Accept. “West.”
“Agent West?” The wobbly voice on the other end was vaguely familiar. “It’s Abigail Dreyfus.”
“Hi,” Jason said in surprise. “I’m afraid I’ve only started reading through the reports and interviews—”
“No, it’s not that. I’m not expecting you to have any answers for me yet.”
A few feet away Sam said, “It’s no problem, Chuck. I owe you one.”
Really? Hard to imagine circumstances where Sam owed anybody anything.
Dreyfus said, “Cheyenne PD just informed me that Michael Khan’s body was found by campers in Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest a short time ago.”
“On my way,” Sam said and clicked off. His gaze met Jason’s.
Jason knew Sam well enough to interpret the message there. His heart sank. He answered Dreyfus automatically, “Suicide?”
“Undetermined.” Dreyfus made an effort to steady her voice. “He was hanging upside down from a tree.”
Chapter Nine
Death did not become him.
It did not become anybody, but in particular it did not become Michael Khan. Partly it was due to hanging upside down. The pull of gravity, the pressure of blood rushing to the head…very visual, very disturbing. Jason would try to put the image of Khan’s bloodshot, bulging eyes and swollen tongue protruding from that greenish-red face out of his mind, but he knew from experience Michael Khan would be haunting his nightmares for a while.
What the hell must Sam’s dreams be like?
Oh, right. Sam barely slept. No wonder.
Jason went back to studying the dead man.
The Hanged Man.
Jason had recognized the staging of the body even before the medical examiner for the Laramie County Coroner’s Office discovered the tarot card tucked in the dead man’s trouser pocket.
The card was one of the major arcana in the tarot deck. It depicted a man hanging upside down by his right foot from a tree. His left leg was jauntily bent behind him. The figure on the tarot card was smiling serenely, having sacrificed himself of his own free will. Michael Khan…not so much.
Wispy dark hair dangling, hands tied behind his back, one foot tied—wired—to the tree trunk, the other leg bound behind in a terrible parody of insouciance. Khan was not smiling. Jason did not want to remember Khan’s expression.
Anyway, it was Jason’s own damned fault for insisting on coming when Sam had all but ordered him to stay home.
He found a boulder to sit on safely out of the way of the crime-scene team, while Sam spoke with Special Agent Dreyfus, deputies from the Routt County Sheriff’s Office, and the representative from the Forest Supervisor’s Office.
The ripple that went through the crime-scene investigators at the discovery of that card made Jason think of people who had just realized they were standing in a mine field.
Serial killer.
No one had said the word, but it was what everyone was thinking.
Everyone but Sam.
It took more than a gruesome crime scene and a single tarot card to excite Sam Kennedy.
It was immediately obvious why Charles Reynolds, SAC of the Cheyenne Resident Agency—busy himself chasing bank robbers on the other side of the county—had called on Sam to pinch-hit in this homicide on federal lands. With the exception of the BAU Chief, murder in the national forest was a new one for everyone present.
Something wet hit the tip of Jason’s nose. He stared up at the roiling mess of black and blacker clouds. It looked like Ruby was right about rain before nightfall.
He gazed out across the ancient rock formations. The ever-present wind moaned and whistled eerily around the phallic towers and tumbled piles of red boulders. Ten square miles of granite cliffs and slabs. There was a stark beauty to this landscape. A few scattered trees—winter-bare aspen and Rocky Mountain maples, spiky Ponderosa pine—but mostly it was just fierce rock and empty sky as far as the eye could see. It looked like a setting suitable for the works of Thomas Moran or Charles M. Russell. All that was missing were a few strategically positioned Native Americans in war bonnets.
Better to think in terms of art than what had first occurred to him: great place for a human sacrifice.
The crime-scene technicians were scrambling to gather evidence and do what they could to preserve the site before the sky opened up. Jason huddled down into his coat. That wind slithering around the dramatic rock formations and scrubby trees was sharp as a knife. His ankle was throbbing. He and Sam had already been on site for over two hours, and it did not look like they would be leaving anytime soon.
Across the clearing, the grim process of cutting Khan’s body down began. Dreyfus came over to join Jason.
“You okay?” he asked her. She looked very pale. Of course, they all looked pale in the cold and sinister light bouncing off the blood-hued rocks.
She nodded. After a minute or two, she said, “I can’t believe it didn’t even click that he was that Sam Kennedy until he started asking questions.”
“No one expects the Spanish Inquisition,” Jason agreed.
He had answered absently and was surprised when she gave him a sideways glance and a shaky giggle. “You can say that again.” She sobered at once. “There’s a question of jurisdiction between the Laramie County Sheriff’s and the Routt County Sheriff’s Office.”
“Great.”
“He basically told them to get their shit together or get off his crime scene.”
“Jesus.” Really, Sam? Jason rubbed his bearded jaw to cover what would have been an inappropriate laugh.
“I mean, we can’t do that, right?” Dreyfus sounded uncertain. “Yes, it’s federal land, but we can’t—shouldn’t—”
“No, we can’t,” Jason said. “But he has his own way of doing things.” Do not attempt this at home! “They do need to get their shit together. This kind of interterritorial pissing match is how cases end up falling through the cracks.”
She nodded as though she ran into interterritorial jousting matches all the time—and maybe she did.
“The coroner won’t commit before the autopsy, of course, but she thinks Khan died of strangulation.” Dreyfus swallowed. “She thinks he was garroted.”
Jason nodded silently.
“We don’t have to inform Mrs. Khan—”
They were silent, watching as the dead man was lowered to a tarp and prepared for transportation. Given the rigidity of the body—barring that ghastly dangling head—Jason surmised death had occurred anywhere from eighteen to twenty-four hours earlier. Sometime late Sunday afternoon or evening.
Dreyfus put a hand to her face. “It’s raining.”
Yes. It was. Temperature and environment might affect the postmortem changes—and sure as hell would make the trip back to the car all the more fun. He probably should have listened to Sam and waited back at Wild Horse Creek, but instinct—or maybe just impulse—had driven him to ride shotgun. It was hard to see how this homicide tied in with his own case—er, Dreyfus’ case—but it obviously did. The coincidence was just too great.
“Why drag him all the way out here?” Dreyfus mused.
Jason shook his head. Why this location? Why that tarot card? Those were just two of a slew of questions that needed to be answered. But not by him.
At this distance, he could not hear Sam, but he could see the effect of his words on the men he was speaking to. They looked varying shades of sheepish and angry.
Having delivered God only knew what verdict, Sam turned and came toward them, his boots grinding the gravel and sandy soil to dust. Dreyfus straightened up as though bracing for impact.
“Ready to go?” Sam asked Jason. His eyes were colder than old ice, but that was not for Jason. It would be for the perceived incompetence of everyone else on this mountaintop.
Jason’s hand tightened on the knobby handle of the blackthorn walking stick that had once belonged to Sam’s grandfather, and pushed to his feet. “Yep.”
Sam turned to Dreyfus. “You’ve got a briefing scheduled for ten a.m. tomorrow with the coroner, and an eleven a.m. conference call with your SAC and Sheriffs Luna and Corday. Phone me afterward.”
Dreyfus said faintly, “Okay.”
Sam gave her one of those steely, steady looks, but said nothing else. Dreyfus looked at Jason. He winked at her. She managed a faint grin.
She said to Sam in a firmer voice, “Yes, sir.”
“Thank you for not saying I told you so,” Jason muttered as they passed another group of deputies.
They were making their way down the increasingly muddy track back to the rental car. Thanks to the lousy weather, it was nearly dark by now, and the poor visibility wasn’t helping matters. Lying around Sam’s mother’s place, Jason had seriously overestimated his strength. Despite the extra support of tape beneath the brace, his ankle was more painful with every step. His back hurt, his hip tingled, and his knee throbbed. He wasn’t being as careful as he needed to be about where he stepped, and more than once the only thing that kept him from planting his face on rock was Sam’s grip.
Like now, when pebbles skittered out from beneath Jason’s boot and Sam’s hand tightened on his elbow.
“You’re welcome.”
The stern tone brought a smile to Jason’s mouth, but the march back to the car was way worse than the hike to the crime scene. He could not have made it without Sam’s help, and he was mad at himself for insisting on coming along and making Sam’s job harder.
To distract himself from the pain of his ankle and other physical woes, he said, “What do you think?”
“I think it’s not my case. And it’s sure as hell not your case.”
“You don’t believe the two crimes are connected?”
“I have no idea. Your involvement relates strictly to the missing art.”
“I know that. I’m not talking about my involvement.” Jason could hear the testiness in his voice. He tried to sound less irritable. “I’m thinking about your involvement. You’ve agreed to act as an advisor, if—when—needed. So? What do you think about the staging of the body? Could this be—”
Sam cut him off. “It’s too soon to think anything. We—they—haven’t even received the coroner’s report yet.”
“Right, but the staging of the body? The tarot card in the dead man’s pocket?”
Sam let out a long, weary breath. “I know you know this, but I’m going to remind you anyway that sometimes—in fact, with depressing frequency—a body is staged in an effort to make it look like something it isn’t.”
“Yes, I do know. But we’re talking about more than a few candles or hair clippings or smeared words in blood. It took effort and planning to get that body out here. It takes effort to hang a full-grown man from a tree.”
“That’s why they call it premeditation. Because it requires planning and effort.”
Jason was silent, partly because he needed his breath for this stretch of the trail. As usual, Sam was correct. Trying to stage a body to look like the first in a serial killing was a common trick of murderers hoping to deflect suspicion from themselves and their usually too obvious motives. It was especially popular with kids and spouses—though it had been known to happen in the art world on dreadful occasion.
The logistics involved in a lone woman transporting the dead weight of an adult male up a hillside and then hanging him in a tree would be discouraging, but not impossible given that the suspected woman would be someone whose job would make her familiar with things like leverage and locomotion. Besides, if Minerva Khan was in the process of moving out of her marriage, there was a reasonable chance she had a new romantic interest in her life, and that new romantic interest might very well have ended up as an accomplice in homicide.
On the other hand, if Mrs. Khan was going to knock off her old man anyway, why bother to steal his art collection?
* * * * *
The shadow of your smile
When you are gone…
Engelbert Humperdinck was crooning at ear-shattering decibels as they crossed the yard of Sam’s mother’s house some time later.
By then it was after eight, and Jason wanted nothing more than a hot shower and his bed. Well, Sam’s bed. Possibly without Sam. For the last thirty minutes, he had been listening to Sam reiterating the limitations of his potential involvement in Special Agent Dreyfus’ investigation, and he was pretty much done. But it was awkward being aggravated with the person who was holding you upright.
“My sole concern is that missing art collection,” Jason had replied. Several times. “I believe I can follow that line of inquiry without getting involved in the homicide investigation. Okay? I’m more than happy to leave that angle to Special Agent Dreyfus and the Cheyenne RA.”
“That’s great,” Sam had said. Also several times. “But the first thing Dreyfus did was phone you. If that kid was any greener, she’d be a Martian.”
“Yeah, but she’s not going to run the investigation. Federal lands or not, it doesn’t sound like the Bureau will be more than peripherally involved. The minute they’re done chasing bank robbers, her SAC is going to hand the file over to an agent with more experience. Dreyfus is only a year into the job, so technically she’s still on probationary status.”
“That RA is about the size of an outhouse. Dollars to donuts, Dreyfus ends up taking point on the art-crime angle.”
“Okay, then all the more reason she needs my help. For God’s sake. I’m right here. Why the hell wouldn’t I help that team out?”
“You’re on sick leave.”
Abruptly, Jason had lost patience. “I’m on sick leave because you wanted me on sick leave! There’s no reason I can’t be on limited duty. Anybody else would be on limited duty.”
Sam’s silence confirmed Jason’s suspicions.
“I’ve got a sprained ankle and some bumps and bruises.”
“And a missing chunk of time.”
Jason was having none of it. “A couple of minutes. At most. My memory’s fuzzy regarding the actual assault, but I remember everything else—and according to you, I’ll remember the details of the assault too, so…”
“This is not the
plan,” Sam said.
Jason gave a short laugh. “Plans change, as you’d be the first to tell me, Kennedy.”
Sam had not responded. Recalculating, no doubt. Jason did not press his advantage. He knew Sam recognized the weakness of his position. He also knew Sam was not conceding defeat.
So they were not speaking as they walked from the car, but the silence between them was not hostile. Cautious maybe. Careful.
The dogs began to bark, and Sam swore under his breath. They reached the guest house, Sam unlocked the door, and they went inside. It was warm and dry and still smelled reminiscently of the steak they’d had for lunch. Jason could have kissed the oak paneling in relief.
“Are you hungry?” Sam’s tone was conciliatory, the expression in his eyes uncharacteristically guarded.
“Probably.” He was still too miserable to know for sure.
“Did you want a drink?”
Jason shook his head. “I think maybe I’ll take a couple of painkillers.”
Sam opened his mouth, caught Jason’s eye, and chose to let it go. He proceeded to make himself a whisky sour.
Jason hobbled into the bedroom, found his pain pills, and washed a couple of them down with the stale water in the glass beside the bed. He wiped his eyes, limped into the bathroom to wash his hands and face, and got a good look at himself in the mirror over the sink. He looked as wretched as he felt. White-faced, windburned, eyes watery from pain and fatigue. No wonder Sam was questioning his judgment. Especially since Sam questioned everyone’s judgment on an ongoing basis.
When he returned to the kitchen, he found Sam sipping his drink and staring broodingly at whatever he’d thrown into the oven. An empty chili can sat on the counter, the lid of a pot chiming against the rim as the contents bubbled away.
“If our positions were reversed,” Jason said, “I’d be doing everything I could to protect you, so I get it.”
“Do you?” Sam’s mouth curved in a not-quite smile.
“Yes. We don’t know who came after me. We don’t know if—when—they’re planning to come at me again. There are a lot of question marks. And on top of that, I’m not exactly fast on my feet right now.”