“I don’t know,” Mari said. “He’s just… creepy, you know? Coming and going from the workshop at all hours. Working on those little pet projects of his.”
Projects that could easily include the preparation for the murders. They were both situations that had obviously required elaborate planning, so a man who came into a workshop like this after hours only added to Paige’s suspicions.
“We need to talk to him,” Christopher said. “Can you take us to him, please?”
“Sure, it’s just this way,” Mari said. “Needless to say, anything you see back there is confidential, ok?”
It took Paige a moment to realize what she meant. If this was a workshop that made props, then they would potentially be in a position to see how a lot of magic tricks worked. Spreading that information too widely would presumably damage the value of everything the company sold. It certainly wouldn’t do its reputation any good.
“We’re not in the habit of spreading people’s confidential business information around,” Christopher said.
Mari gave him a doubtful look, obviously having seen his reaction to the magic tricks there. She probably thought that he was going to try to get as much information on how different tricks were done as he could. Still, she led the way through into the workshop proper.
At least half of it was a huge warehouse for existing props. Looking around, Paige could see wooden and metal cabinets of every shape and size, along with rows of statues that might have been made of plaster or painted canvas on wood.
“You sell all this?” Paige asked, not quite believing that anyone could sell quite that many magical props.
She saw Mari shrug. “Most of it we hire out, or we store for some of the bigger acts. They have this stuff made for their tours, but they don’t want to buy a warehouse of their own, so we hire out some of our space to them.”
It was still bizarre, walking through it all. There were racks of what Paige assumed were prop weapons, each more elaborate than the last. There were platforms and cunning mechanisms, along with box after box. Paige saw one labelled Modernity: Skulls, and found herself wondering exactly what that act entailed.
The floor wasn’t a standard warehouse floor, because there were old rugs covering much of the place, many of them with faded squares on them where prop cabinets had stood in the same place for too long under lights. Trunks and cabinets were stacked up on top of one another, forming piles and walls to navigate around.
This place was a maze, or maybe it was better to think of it as a kind of fun house or house of horrors. There were so many strange objects scattered around that everywhere Paige looked, she saw something unlikely: a full length model of a mummy, an Egyptian mask, a sculpture of a swan designed to look as though it was made from ice.
Paige could hear the sound of tools now, and it was only a moment or two longer before she and Christopher came out into a large workshop space. There were individual benches set out around it, each one surrounded by props to such an extent that they were almost individual workrooms, walled in by the creations of those within. Paige saw someone in one corner welding a huge buzzsaw blade onto a frame, saw another man sharpening the edge of what appeared to be a guillotine. At the other end of the scale, a man in one corner was working on an intricate device with the care of a watchmaker, and a woman was looking in a mirror, a flame appearing and disappearing in one outstretched hand while she made notes with the other about a device strapped to her wrist.
“Which one is Zane?” Christopher asked.
Mari pointed to where a man in his forties was working on a large cabinet that had been made to look like some kind of scientific, see-through pod. He was wearing blue overalls and had streaks of oil on his face. He was maybe six feet tall, broad shouldered and muscled in a way that filled out his overalls. He was kind of good looking, clean shaven and dark haired. Paige could imagine him up on stage somewhere, playing his part, getting the audience to go along with everything he said as he performed one of his effects.
“Have you got things from here?” she asked. “I need to get back to the front desk.”
Paige and Christopher headed towards him, spreading out slightly so that he wouldn’t have any room to run. At least the props hemming him in on three sides of the little workshop space meant that he had nowhere else to go.
He looked up as Christopher and Paige approached, looking somewhat annoyed by the sudden intrusion on his work.
“What are you, a double act? I don’t have time for any more commissions.”
Paige saw Christopher hold up his badge. “We’re not a double act. Zane Caister? We want to talk to you about the murders of two women.”
Paige saw Zane tense, then grab for a saw, holding it in front of himself as if he might use it as a weapon to fend the two of them off.
“Stay back!” he yelled, his tone angry and fearful in equal measure.
Paige had her gun out in an instant, taking up the perfect shooting stance that had been drilled into her back in the academy. She saw that Christopher had his Glock out as well. Paige could feel her heart beating faster with the thought of what might happen. She had only shot one person in her life, a serial killer who had been on the verge of killing her mother. Even then, Paige had shot to wound, not kill.
“Put the weapon down, Zane,” Paige said, trying to think of a way to resolve this peacefully. “There’s nowhere for you to go.”
He started to back away, though, moving towards the cabinet that he’d been working on.
“Stay where you are, Zane,” Christopher ordered him, his gun still leveled.
Zane threw down his weapon, but didn’t stop backing away. That created a dilemma. Paige and Christopher couldn’t just shoot an unarmed man. All they could do was follow, trying to get to him before he found a way to escape.
He moved into the clear glass cabinet that he’d built, and pressed a button. Smoke shot up, obscuring him as he stood there until Paige couldn’t see him. Slowly, the smoke started to dissipate.
Zane Caister wasn’t there anymore. He’d vanished, seemingly into thin air.