Dear Clarissa,
Thank you for your response, and for your portfolio. We think you might be a good fit for the show we’re building, and would like to see you to audition this Tuesday. Because we have shows running during the day, we have to run the auditions later at night. I hope that won’t be a problem for you. We’ve booked a slot for you to audition at 11:45.
That probably helped to narrow down the time of death, but it also potentially gave them another route to the killer. One that might let them catch him quickly, maybe even before Paige and Christopher hit the ground.
“Christopher, presumably we have ways to trace this email back to the person who sent it?” Paige said.
“I think our tech people are trying, but it looks like it’s from a burner account, set up just for this. Maybe we’ll be able to trace it back to a phone or a computer in a café somewhere, but then linking it back to a specific person might be harder.”
“I guess it was too much to hope that this guy would be stupid enough to send the email from his own account,” Paige said.
“If it were that simple, then they wouldn’t need us to catch him,” Christopher said. “But we’ll think of something.”
He sounded so confident about that, either because of the cases they’d worked on before, or simply because he trusted in their talents. Paige wished that she had that kind of confidence, the kind that came from working case after case, catching criminal after criminal.
“I hope so,” Paige said.
“I have you here,” Christopher said, as if that made all the difference, turning it into a near certainty. “Have you worked out anything about the killer yet?”
He said it as if he assumed that Paige would have them fully profiled by now. Paige tried to think, looking at the crime scene photographs. What did the things they knew about the murders tell them about the killer? What could Paige deduce about him?
“The MO is the most interesting part of it,” Paige said. “You said that he killed both victims in ways that mimic existing magic tricks?”
Christopher nodded. “The bullet catch and a standard escapology trick.”
“Explain to me how the tricks are meant to work,” Paige said, partly because she wanted to understand more about the killer, and partly because she wanted to see just how much Christopher knew about all this.
“There are different versions of both,” Christopher said. “But there are kind of standard, classic versions.”
He really did sound as if he knew a lot about magic. Paige found herself wondering if his knowledge was just a hangover from when he was a kid, or something he still had an interest in.
“Tell me about those,” Paige said.
“For the bullet catch, the magician calls an audience member up on stage and has them mark or initial a bullet,” Christopher said, with sudden enthusiasm. “They put that bullet in a gun, and an assistant, or sometimes the audience member, fires it at the magician. The magician then reveals the bullet that was signed, held between their teeth. Although in the original version, it was caught in a plate.”
Paige had to admit that it was fun watching him geek out about a subject he obviously knew well. She had to remind herself that this wasn’t about watching Christopher’s reactions, though. This was about trying to catch a killer.
“And the prop bullets?” Paige said.
Christopher looked suddenly serious. “Chung Ling Soo died performing the trick when his specially altered rifle misfired, shooting the real bullet, rather than a blank round. Or maybe a worn fragment. Opinion is divided. What we know is that more people have died doing this one trick than any other. These days, there are versions of the trick using dummy bullets to try to increase the safety.”
Again, Paige could see the way his face lit up when he was talking about something he obviously knew about. It was hard not to feel a wave of attraction as that life came into him.
“What about the trick with the safe?” Paige asked him, forcing herself to focus on the case.
“That’s more about escapology than classic magic,” Christopher said. He sounded as if it wasn’t something he gave quite as much attention to.
“Not the kind of thing you do?” Paige asked him, suddenly wanting to know more about him.
Christopher looked slightly embarrassed. “I mostly just do card tricks and sleight of hand. Close up magic.”
“Ah, so you admit you still do it!” Paige said, suddenly aware of how easy it was to add this layer of friendliness above the professionalism. Too easy, maybe, because it would be simple to slide into more than that, into thinking that there was more there than there was.
“Ok, yes,” Christopher admitted. He took out his FBI badge, put it between his hands, an in an instant it was gone, vanished.
Paige had to fight the urge to applaud. She had to focus on the case, not on Christopher.
“Do you know how the safe trick works?” Paige asked.