CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
He worked on the saw, sharpening it slowly, wanting it to be perfect for his next effect. He checked every tooth of it, making sure that it was straight and rust free, working on it with a sharpening stone, then oiling it carefully.
When he was sure that it was sharp, he went over to the box set on a trestle table in the old workshop that had belonged to his father, setting the saw into the groove reserved for it. He wanted to practice his stroke with the saw before the final effect of his act, the climax that would bring the attention of the world to his work.
Not that the box was his. It had been his father’s just as so much of the rest of this had been. His father, who had fancied himself to be the greatest magician since Robert Houdan, who had tried everything from large illusions to mentalism, and who had sunk all of his efforts and attention into the quest to become better known and better loved.
He certainly hadn’t had any attention left to spare for his son. When his father’s attention had come his way, it had been to try to force him to assist with the magic act, then to criticize him for not doing well enough.
He sawed at the box then, anger lending a strength to the strokes of the saw that hadn’t been there before.
He tried to remind himself of just how well his last few effects had gone. His audience of police and FBI agents seemed rapt in the attention that they gave to his work, and they still hadn’t deciphered the mysteries behind it of who or why. Perhaps, once this final piece was performed, he would stand up and take a bow.
Or not. A magician never revealed his secrets, after all, and keeping some mystery meant that there was more chance of a return tour at a future date. A chance to work on some new ideas before he revealed them to his adoring public.
He was getting ahead of himself, though. For now, he had to focus on this last great trick. He wanted this climax to be spectacular.
He had reworked this method, of course. His father’s box for sawing someone in half had been carefully designed to allow them to drop out of the way of the saw, and then to allow the two halves to be pulled apart neatly, with no danger to anyone.
It had taken him quite some time to modify this original box to be… well, just a box again. One that would hold his target very firmly in place while he set to work with the saw.
He’d had this effect in his mind before he’d killed any of the others. From the very start of it all, this was the moment that he’d been building up to. That had been another thing he’d learned from his father: that a magician planned the end to his act from the very beginning, and built towards it carefully, step by step, slowly raising the intensity.
There were probably some who might say that sawing someone in half wasn’t as spectacular as drowning them in a tank filled with sharks. The sharks had certainly taken more effort logistically. Yet this final effect was far more meaningful to him, far more personal. This was the trick that his father had made him work on obsessively. The one that he’d always made the climax of his act.
Now, though, he needed to find the perfect assistant for his performance. Those for his previous ones had been more than adequate substitutes, but for this one, only one person would do.
So he called her.
“Antoinette, it’s me,” he said. “Sorry to call you out of the blue like this.”
He pictured her as he called, so tall and slender, with that dancer’s body that had kept his father so enthralled and meant that she’d never had to do any of the hard work around the act. She’d never been the one berated for getting something wrong, or made to pack away the whole act because his father was in a furious mood after another terrible gig.
He kept sawing idly as he thought about her, imagining her there with each stroke, imagining both the screams and the satisfaction of it.
“Wow,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting you to call like this. I don’t think I’ve heard from you since your father passed. Not since the funeral.”
That was true, because he’d been careful to have nothing to do with her, or with any of his father’s old life. He’d left everything in storage, hadn’t even gone to touch it, despite the part of him that had wanted to burn it all to the ground.
He’d walked away from it all, left it behind. And then… then he’d found that he couldn’t. He’d found that there were some things that were impossible to move on from. He’d gone into the workshop, looked around, and known what he had to do.
“I had to take the time to get my head straight,” he said.
“I understand,” Antoinette replied. “It took me a long time to get over the loss of your father too.”
As if she’d ever understood anything about him. As if she’d done anything but tease and torment him, this woman who’d been his father’s assistant, his muse, and his lover.
“What’s that noise?” Antoinette asked.
“Oh, nothing,” he replied, stopping sawing for the moment. “Something I’m working on. Something I’d love to show you, actually. Look, you’re still in Las Vegas, right?”
He knew that she was, but he didn’t want to make it obvious that he’d been stalking her, looking through every facet of her life to plan how this would go.
“Yes, still in the old house.”
His father’s old house. He’d left it to her, while he’d only gotten the workshop.
“Would you like to meet up? I’d love to see you again, and maybe talk about Dad. It’s been so long.”
“I’d like that too,” she said. “Tonight?”
He smiled, looking down at the length of the saw. “Tonight would be perfect.”