Black Magic

by Steven Henry

  “Erin,” Vic said with a smile, “sometimes I forget you’re a girl.”

  “I never forget you’re a caveman,” she shot back. “Do you even know how to iron a shirt?”

  “I use a dry-cleaning service.”

  “Good. For a second I thought you’d say you just wear things until they’re dirty enough to stand up on their own, then throw them out and buy new stuff.”

  “Hey, that’s a good idea.”

  “Not on our salary, it’s not.” Erin kept leafing through the clothes. “You’re feeling better.”

  “Not much,” he said. “I’ll be good once I throw the cuffs on our guy.”

  “You’re lucky Webb didn’t give you an insubordination rip.”

  He grinned again. “I know. Felt good to say it, though.”

  Erin smiled back. “I feel kinda bad for the poor guy. He has to put up with us.”

  “Yeah,” Vic said. “Our messed-up little dys¬func¬tion¬al family.”

  “I wonder who was in here,” she said, returning her attention to the clothes.

  “Probably someone looking for that thirty grand.”

  She nodded. “Could be the killer.” She stooped and picked up a crimson satin glove, elbow-length, that had fallen, or been tossed, to one side. She laid it on the dressing table and went back to her search.

  The suit was at the back, hidden in a corner. She reached in and brought it out triumphantly.

  “That doesn’t belong here,” Vic agreed. All the other outfits were performance costumes.

  Erin did a quick check of the pockets. “Got something here,” she said, pulling out a driver’s license. She and Vic took it under the lights for a closer look.

  “Ronald Whitaker,” Vic read aloud. “I’m not real up on Michigan IDs, but it looks legit to me.”

  “That’s because it is,” Erin said, squinting at the piece of plastic. “It’s a genuine Michigan license, I’d bet on it. But the photo’s been glued on. Look.”

  “That’s some good forgery work,” Vic said, holding it up and turning it back and forth. “She must’ve worked the photo beforehand, got the lines and everything. And check out the shadow image. Damn, how’d she do that?”

  “You can see the edges, if you look for them,” Erin said. “We could peel this right off. It’s not meant to pass a real close check.”

  “But it’s great at arm’s length,” Vic said. “And I’ll bet the license number’s accurate. You think our buddy the Great Ronaldo had to have his license replaced recently? Thought it just fell out of his wallet, maybe?”

  “I was right,” she said. “Kathy was robbing her boss. Thirty thousand in a week.”

  “He’d have noticed,” Vic said.

  “That’s why she was working fast,” Erin said. “She was cleaning out his accounts as quick as she could without provoking a reaction from the bank. I think Kathy was planning to cut loose from Whitaker right here in New York.”

  “You think Whitaker knew that?” Vic asked.

  “I’m starting to wonder,” Erin said. “I’m also wondering where Kathy was planning to go.” She picked up the discarded red glove she’d found earlier.

  “What’s that for?” he asked.

  “What do you think? The nose knows.” She held the glove in front of Rolf’s snout. “Rolf, such.”

  The Shepherd took a deep sniff at the glove. He dipped his head to the floor. Then he went for the door, tail wagging eagerly.

  “Erin,” Vic said. “If you’re trying to track the killer, he’s not hanging around here.”

  “Maybe not,” she agreed. “But we might be able to find out where he went.” She opened the door. Rolf was off down the hall, pulling steadily at the leash. He was on a good, fresh scent.

  He didn’t go far. Almost immediately, he stopped in front of another door, whined, and scratched at its base.

  “Whitaker’s dressing room,” Vic said. “Why am I not surprised?”

  “Let’s have a look,” Erin said. She took hold of the doorknob, twisted, and pushed.

  The door swung open. The room was dark. She groped for the light switch. Incandescent bulbs flared.

  A man was standing in the corner of the room, half-hidden behind a coat-rack.

  “Louis Miller?” Erin exclaimed.

  He stepped out with a sheepish smile. “Ah, Detective. This is certainly awkward. I can assure you, this isn’t what it looks like.”

  “If I had a dollar for every time someone told me that,” Vic said over her shoulder, “I wouldn’t have to worry about my dry-cleaning bills.”

  “I think you better tell me what it is,” Erin said. “Before we haul your ass downtown.”

  Miller gave Erin his very best showman’s smile, dazzling white teeth and utterly insincere eyes. “I was simply looking for a few small trinkets, little gifts I’d given Kat. They had sentimental value, though they weren’t terribly expensive. I didn’t think anyone would mind.”

  “Sentimental value,” Erin repeated. “For the girl you were physically, not romantically, entangled with?”

  The grin stayed on his face, looking more artificial by the moment. “I may have understated my attachment to Kat. I really was fond of her.”

  “That’s right,” Erin said. “In fact, you were going to run away with her.”

  The smile faltered. “I beg your pardon?”

  “She told her mom. About your plan. That was why she stole Whitaker’s money.”

  “Great disappearing act,” Vic added. “The poor bastard’s assistant vanishes one day, and then he checks his bank account, and presto! It’s gone, too!”

  “It would’ve been a great way to put one over on your rival,” Erin said. “And that’s one thing you magicians are all about, right? Fooling one another is the best trick of all. So what went wrong? I’m guessing she found out you didn’t actually love her.”

  “I never said I loved her,” Miller said. He was definitely looking uncomfortable now. “In fact, I recall saying more or less the opposite to you.”

  “Yeah, right before you hit on me,” she said dryly. “You gotta work on your pickup lines. But you never had any intention of running off with her.”

  He sighed. “No, I didn’t.”

  “But you told her you would.”

  He nodded. “You have to understand, Detective, Kat was a born con woman. She spread lies faster than a tabloid newspaper. Do you have any idea how many men she told she loved, only for them to wake up one morning to an empty bank account and a ruined marriage?”

  “Yeah, we met one of those guys at a chop shop,” Erin said. “He’s in jail now, too.”

  “Grand theft auto,” Vic put in.

  “That’s exactly my point!” Miller said. “She lived by cheating and swindling. Of course I didn’t trust her! She didn’t trust me, either. We were playing one another!”

  “What for?” Erin asked. “Sex?”

  “No!” he said. “Well, yes. That was an element of the relationship.”

  “Money?”

  “That, too.”

  “You were going to con her out of whatever money she got from Whitaker?” Erin shook her head. “That’s what you were really looking for here, of course. The thirty thousand she siphoned out of his bank account. You should’ve gotten your hands on it first.”

  “Before what?” Miller asked.

  “Before you rigged the saw trick,” she said.

  Miller blinked. “Wait. No, that’s not what happened!”

  “You saying Kathy didn’t get sawed in half?” Vic inquired.

  “No! I mean, I didn’t kill her!”

  “Right,” Vic said. “All you did was seduce her, lie to her, conspire to rob her boss, plan to leave her, and then break into a sealed crime scene in order to tamper with evidence and commit burglary. Y’know what, Erin? I don’t think I believe this guy when he says he’s innocent. Any idea why?”

  “Because he’s a lying piece of shit,” she said.

  “My thou
ghts exactly,” Vic said. He pulled out his handcuffs. “And I was right. I’m already feeling a whole lot better.”

  “Wait,” Miller said. “You can’t be serious.”

  “You spend a lot of time with people who lie for a living,” Erin said. “So believe me when I say I’m dead serious. Louis Miller, you’re under arrest for conspiracy to commit grand larceny, and for the murder of Kathy Grimes. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be assigned to you by the court. Do you understand these rights?”

  “I...” he started. Then he shrugged resignedly. “Yes, I understand. But are you sure you want to do this, Detectives?”

  “I’m pretty sure I do,” Vic said, brandishing the cuffs. “Turn around and place your hands behind your back.”

  A thin smile came back to Miller’s face. “Are you watching closely?” he asked.

  Vic snapped the cuffs closed. “Yeah. I am.”

  “You want to take him out to the car?” Erin asked.

  “Sure,” Vic said. “What’re you doing?”

  “I just want to take another quick look around, see if we missed anything else.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll be outside if you need me.”

  Chapter 17

  Erin and Rolf were left alone in the theater. She scratched the K-9 behind the ears. “Good boy,” she said. He’d done a great job tracking Miller, and he was still enjoying his payoff. Rolf was busily gnawing his chew-toy, not a care in the world.

  While the dog enjoyed his reward, she considered the situation. She should have felt good about the case; they had their suspect in custody, everything seemed to fit together. But she was uneasy. Something was missing.

  “Miller wanted the money,” she said to Rolf. “Kathy had it hidden in her hotel room. But Miller didn’t know that. So he came in and ransacked the costume room. But why didn’t he look for the money back when he sabotaged the machine?”

  Rolf wagged his tail agreeably, showing he was listening, but kept his attention focused on the rubber ball. As far as he was concerned, the ball was the very best thing in the world.

  “If he had backstage access, why take the risk of showing up twice?” she went on. “And if he didn’t find the money, why kill Kathy? Wouldn’t it be better to keep her alive, pretend to run off with her, and get the cash later?”

  She pressed a hand to her forehead and tried to think. She could really use a drink. It would steady her out, calm her down.

  “No,” she said, suddenly a little scared. Was this really what she was coming down to? A woman who needed a drink just to get through the day? Was she turning into an alcoholic?

  Rolf cocked his head at her. His jaws kept working the ball.

  She couldn’t help smiling at the ridiculous picture of her badass K-9 chomping a rubber ball like a two-month pup. “Gonna do better, partner,” she said. “Have to.”

  Erin glanced into the room where they’d busted Miller. Whitaker’s dressing room. Why’d he been hanging out there? No way would Kathy have stashed the cash in her boss’s room.

  “He had another reason for being here,” she said slowly, nodding to herself. “It wasn’t just about the money. He was checking up on his rival. Maybe looking for some trade secrets. These guys are always trying to put one over on each other. Whitaker would do the same thing to him. Hell, they booked theaters across the street from each other.”

  The rivalry was the important thing. Each magician was trying to beat the other. But what had Whitaker done to Miller? Nothing that Erin knew of. But that was the thing about magic. What you saw was only half of what was going on.

  “Whitaker wins,” Erin said. That was the truth. His rival was out of the way, he gained a lot of press. He lost an assistant, but so what? The world was full of wannabe-starlets who’d love to put on a rhinestone-studded bikini and prance around the stage. For some of them, the danger would just be an added thrill. Besides, Kathy had been robbing him. She was no great loss, in the end. But that line of thinking only made sense if...

  “Holy shit,” she said. “What if that’s the magic trick? That there’s no trick at all? What if what happened on stage was exactly what it looked like?”

  Excitement rushed through her in a way it hadn’t during this whole damn sordid mess of a case. She wanted to take another look on stage, just to remind herself. But she was already sure.

  “Rolf, komm!” she ordered.

  He obediently got to his feet and deposited his beloved toy in her hand. The now-slimy ball went into her jacket pocket. Then they went to look at the murder scene one more time.

  They approached the stage from behind, through the service hallways. Erin saw various paraphernalia of the show laid out, ready for use. To a detective, it was a ghastly set of props. Swords, throwing knives, shackles, a drowning tank. It was practically a murder buffet. She wondered how they all could’ve been so blind.

  The curtains were closed. The evidence techs had drawn them down to make sure they could catalog any stray blood-spatter that might have gotten lost in the heavy velvet folds. Erin and Rolf walked toward the curtains. Rolf sniffed the stage with interest. The smell of blood and death was fainter than it had been, but if Erin could still smell it, she knew it would be filling the dog’s nostrils.

  She froze. Voices were coming through the curtain. A man and a woman.

  “...feels kind of funny being here,” the woman said. “Spooky. It gives me the creeps, a little.”

  “That’s part of the ambience,” said the man, whose voice was familiar. “Remember, with a magic show, the danger is part of the point. It’s like a roller-coaster. Haven’t you ever screamed during a scary movie?”

  The woman giggled. “Yeah.”

  “It’s the same here. We’ll put you in black. You’ll be a spirit guide, a medium. Did you know, stage magic and séances have been linked for a hundred years? Harry Houdini was a spiritualist. You’d be fantastic in black, maybe with some silver thread laced through. You’ve got a great complexion for the spotlight, that pale skin, almost translucent.”

  “Oh, stop it,” the woman said, but Erin could hear she didn’t really mean it. “Mr. Whitaker—”

  “Please, call me Ron. If we’re going to be working together, we need to be on a first-name basis.”

  Erin had heard enough. She was pissed off now. The nerve of this guy. She went quickly to the curtain and stepped through.

  “I hope I’m not interrupting something,” she said with false cheeriness.

  Ronald Whitaker stood just a few feet in front of her, facing a young woman. The woman was dark-haired and very pretty. Whitaker had his hand on her arm and was standing very close to her. When he heard Erin’s voice, he let go of the girl and stepped back reflexively.

  “Detective!” he exclaimed. “This is a surprise.”

  “I’ll bet,” she said. “If it wasn’t, I don’t think you’d be holding a job interview at an active crime scene. With the blood of her predecessor on the stage.” She cocked her head toward the shockingly large stain that discolored the stage and front few rows of seats.

  “Who’re you?” the girl asked.

  “Detective O’Reilly,” Erin said. “NYPD Major Crimes. I’m investigating the murder of Kathy Grimes. Some people called her Kat. She wasn’t what you’d call a good girl. Always in trouble with the law, with a bunch of guys on her trail who’d have loved to hurt her. But she was always able to keep one step ahead of them. She cheated and conned every guy she ever met, but she was so pretty and charming, she got away with it.

  “Until she made a fatal mistake. She made an offer to her boss’s rival. She’d take the boss’s money and his secrets, and they’d run off to live happily ever after as a successful stage couple.”

  Erin paused. “I don’t know which betrayal hurt the most. Was it the money, the magic, or the sex?”

  Whitaker’s b
row wrinkled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Detective.”

  “It’s a funny thing,” she said. “I’ve talked to a lot of perps over the years. Innocent people never say they don’t know what I’m talking about. Not once. They ask what I mean. Because they don’t know. The guilty ones, they know just fine.

  “I expect you found out your bank balance was running a little low,” she continued. “Either that or you were already suspicious of Kathy. Were you sleeping with her, too?”

  “That’s none of your business,” he said. “The relationships of two consenting adults aren’t within the NYPD’s purview.”

  Erin shook her head, ignoring his words. “You couldn’t resist, though. Simple revenge wasn’t good enough for you. You had to hurt Kathy, had to do something really awful to her. And public. You wanted us to find out. You know that lots of perps want to get caught? They want to tell their story. To be understood. Ron, I know what Kathy did to you. She betrayed you completely. She treated you like dirt. After everything you did for her, too.”

  “She’d be shaking her ass on stage for dollar bills stuffed in her G-string without me,” Whitaker snapped, and Erin was stunned by the sudden change in him. “All that girl knew how to do was screw men, one way or another. Oh, she was good at it. That girl was sex on two legs. If you’d ever seen her... man. She was something else. I pulled her out of Detroit. You know what that town is like? I gave her a future, I gave her an audience! But she couldn’t resist cheating, at everything she ever did.”

  Erin nodded. She had a hand resting on the butt of her Glock now, just in case. She had no idea whether he was armed, and a cop always assumed the worst. “I think it was especially clever how you pinned it on Miller,” she said. “Was that the plan all along, or just a fringe benefit?”

  Whitaker smiled at her, one of the most chilling smiles she’d ever seen. She hadn’t truly pegged him for a psychopath until that moment. “A good magician never reveals all his secrets,” he said.

  “Ron?” the girl asked hesitantly. Both Erin and Whitaker had been ignoring her. They glanced her way now. “What’s she saying, Ron?”