CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
Paige pulled up outside the park, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel, trying to work out whether she should head inside. The park seemed to squat in front of her, dark compared to the bright lights of Las Vegas around it. Yet not as dark as Paige might have expected. There were flickers of light there, as if someone had set small lights throughout the place.
Paige knew that she ought to wait there for backup. She should wait for Christopher to arrive, and only then go in to deal with the killer. If she did that, though, then Antoinette Couchon would still be in danger. She would still be in there with the killer, and he would be free to do what he wanted with her.
No, Paige had to go in now. She had to deal with this.
She got out of the car, readying her Glock and taking out a flashlight to shine beneath it. She left the shotgun in the trunk because, if there was a civilian there with the killer who might find herself used as a human shield, Paige didn’t want a weapon that might potentially hit them both.
Not that she wanted to have to shoot anyone. Paige wanted to get in there, make the arrest, and make sure that this killer never had a chance to hurt anyone again.
She slipped into the park, ducking under a chain set across the path. There were more chains set at intervals, in a chaotic spider’s web that lent an eerie air to the whole place.
Lanterns had been set in the trees, the light from them reflecting from the chains across the paths. Paige had to duck under those chains, pausing each time to make sure that there was no one waiting to ambush her. In the dark, it would have been easy for the killer to hide, ready to spring out on Paige as she approached.
Did he know that she was coming? Paige didn’t think so. She hadn’t announced her arrival, and she was trying to move as quietly as she could, but she still couldn’t shake the feeling of eyes on her as she made her way through the park.
Paige’s flashlight picked out the branches around her, reaching out like dark tendrils against the light. Paige had to brush branches aside to make any progress, pushing through the overgrown foliage of the park, trying to watch out for any danger ahead.
It was too close to the way things had been back when Paige had been fourteen, looking for her father out in the woods. Back then, she’d been as determined as she was now. She’d been sure that she would be the one to find him, because she was the one who’d spent plenty of time in the woods with him. She was the one who had known every inch of those woods.
She was the one who had found her father.
For several seconds, all she could do was stand there, paralyzed by the memory. Paige stood there, stuck with the image of her father dead on the ground in front of her. He’d been sprawled against a tree, held in place by ropes, utterly pale and empty of blood.
Paige could still remember the terror she’d felt in that moment, and the horror. She hadn’t been able to move, hadn’t been able to think. She’d only been able to stand there, and stare, and eventually scream so loud that people had come running. People had found her, standing there over her father’s body. They had come and taken her away, asked her questions, tried to help.
The pain of that moment was still as fresh as it had been on the day Paige had found her father. It was still enough that she could barely move with it, that her breath came in quick pants that didn’t seem to take in enough oxygen. She could only stand with her back pressed against a tree, the solidity of it the only thing holding her upright right then.
Paige forced herself to take deep breaths. She couldn’t let herself be stopped by her memories, however traumatic they were. She wasn’t that little girl anymore. She was a fully trained federal agent, and there was a civilian in danger from a serial killer. Paige had to act now. She had to do something to intervene.
Paige slowly managed to move away from the tree, putting one foot in front of the other, taking deep breaths as she went. This wasn’t about her; this was about catching a killer.
Paige guessed that the space that had been used for performances was at the center of the park, but actually finding her way to it was harder than she expected. The whole place couldn’t be that large, because in Las Vegas, a huge, unused space would quickly find itself redeveloped. Yet the whole place was so tangled, the trails so broken up by the chains, that it was almost impossible not to get turned around.
Then Paige heard the screams somewhere ahead, and suddenly she knew which direction she needed to go in.
“Help! Somebody help me!”
“That’s it!” a man’s voice said. “Play it up for the audience. Let them really hear how scared you are, Antoinette!”
Paige hurried towards the sounds, weaving her way through the pathways, not caring now about the branches that whipped past her face. The lanterns still hung in the branches, and Paige followed them as much as the screams.
“Help!”
Paige ran forward, still trying to watch for danger, but knowing that she didn’t have much time left now. This killer had picked methods that used asphyxiation for some of his victims, but that didn’t mean he would do things the same way now. The magic trick was the important part for him, and there were plenty of those that might involve shooting or stabbing. Any moment Paige wasted might be the one in which Antoinette Couchon died.
She came out into a large, open space covered in grass that had grown to knee height. There were folding chairs set out in that space, as if in anticipation of an audience. Those chairs looked new, as if they’d only just been put there recently.
They were arranged in rows in front of a broad stage. That stage was anything but new. It looked as if it had been there fifty years or more. It was painted in a mixture of white, blue, and gold, but those colors were faded and the paint was peeling. There were spots where the wood was rotten, and a couple of planks had given way completely.
Posters had been put up around the stage, each proclaiming a different magician from the past. There was Chung Ling Soo, Harry Houdini, and there among them, the Great Supremus.
The stage was set for a magic show. There were mechanisms set up there, including a couple of empty door frames, a rope that seemed to be hanging up with no support, a large set of blades sticking into a box from all angles, and…
And in the middle of it all, a box was sitting atop trestle stands. It was brightly, almost gaudily painted in red and cream, as if to suggest blood spraying from skin.
A woman was trapped in that box. She was probably in her fifties, blonde haired and with a beauty mark that Paige could make out even from a distance. She looked terrified, and was thrashing against the confines of the box that held her.