Angel Killer Read online

  Chisholm goes over to a side of the conference hall where his people are reviewing the profile they’re creating of the Warlock. He’s one of the most important people in the FBI, and yet he’s in the field trying to scrape together something to give us a lead. I respect his dedication.

  I think it’s the black swan factor that has drawn him in. The Warlock is just so atypical. Since leaving the behavioral analysis unit for sciences, Chisholm spends more of his time teaching and on research. Back out here he’s in the presence of something real. Something immediate.

  My phone rings. It’s Ailes. I walk over to a quiet corner of the hall.

  “Anything exciting to report, Agent Blackwood?”

  “You’re the mathematician. What are the odds that someone would find a missing Avenger bomber in the middle of the Atlantic?”

  “Higher than you might think. Jennifer looked into this and noticed all the previous documented searches fell into the classical search pattern mistakes.”

  “What are those?” I ask.

  “Giving too much weight to one data point and ignoring the fact that at least some of your data points are going to be manufactured.”

  “You mean somebody lying?”

  “No. Not exactly. Go to a high school science fair where kids are measuring the height of daisies or size of diatoms in ocean water and you’ll notice a strange effect. Scientists do it too. If someone measures something that’s exactly one centimeter, or some other number that sounds too perfect, they change it to .9 or 1.1. The same thing happens with coordinates. We ran a test on some naval log books and found that you almost never get an exact coordinate like ten degrees mark ten degrees. Nobody wants to look lazy. I’ve got a bet with Gerald that I can predict something about the signatures on the logbooks when those kinds of numbers do come up, the round ones.”

  “What’s that?”

  Ailes lowers his voice. He must be calling from the bullpen and not want Gerald to hear. “There will be two signatures with the nice round numbers. If two people witnesses it, then they’re not as worried about appearing dishonest by using what they imagine is an overly convenient number. The positions for Flight 19 smell of very scared people trying to cover their own asses and not be asked why their numbers are too round. I bet a search that takes this into account might be more fruitful.”

  “You think the Warlock knows this?”

  “Maybe. If we can figure it out in a few hours, a man as smart as him, who seems intent on showing how clever he is, might come to the same conclusion. Or maybe he got lucky. Maybe both. What’s it like down there?”

  I describe the scene in the conference room. He’s getting the live feeds at Quantico too. “I see a lot of clever people trying to pick up the pieces after the fact.” It reminds me of an observation my uncle shared. “You know the difference between a comedian and a magician?”

  “What’s that?” he asks.

  “A comedian waits for the laughter and applause to die down before moving on to his next bit. A magician uses it as a distraction to start his next one. I think we’re very distracted.”

  “What do you think we should be doing?”

  “I’m not in charge. I’m out of my element here.” The room feels busy. But that’s not the point.

  “So are the rest of us. Indulge me,” replies Ailes.

  He knows something is bugging me. I let it out. “I guess what it comes down to is the victims. The deceptions are incidental. If we found their bodies in a forest, no dramatic staging, we’d focus mainly on trying to find out who they are.”

  “Their faces have popped up on every television so far. We’re getting hundreds of calls, but no missing persons.”

  “I know. I know,” I reply. “But doesn’t that strike you as odd? I mean, these people didn’t come from Mars. The other Chloe and the man in the plane don’t look like drifters. I didn’t see any signs of heavy drug addiction. As harsh as it sounds, they look like people who would be missed.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  I’m trying to put my finger on it. “This is the real deception. Or at least the one nobody in this room wants to pay attention to just yet. We’ve got two victims nobody says are missing. The Warlock has given us impossible explanations for their deaths. If we don’t figure who they really are, the mystery is going to remain and we’ll even have failed them in giving them some sense of peace. They’ll remain a Jane and John Doe as long as we buy into the illusion.”

  “A good point. You mention this to Chisholm or the field supervisor there?”

  “No. Knoll seems like a sharp guy, but I don’t think Jensen was impressed with my demonstration.”

  “You need to be mindful, Jessica. You have two strikes going against you when you walk into a room.”

  Two? I can only think of one. “I’m a woman.”

  “The worst kind. You’re attractive, which wouldn’t be an issue if you didn’t have the burden of usually being the smartest person in the room. They know you’re smarter than they are. It’s in your eyes.”

  “I don’t feel so smart.”

  “Trust me. I spend all day around people smarter than me.” He holds the phone aside. “Except you, Gerald. I keep you around to feel smarter than someone.”

  It’s comforting to hear him kid around with his subordinates like that. I get the feeling that all they want to do is impress him and be impressed by each other.

  Ailes adopts a sympathetic tone. “Well, unless you want to dig around down there, you’re welcome to come back to the brain trust up here and bounce ideas around. Maybe we can figure out the next one before it happens.”

  I look over at the chaotic room and realize that there’s really no place for me. Everyone has their task. Maybe if I’m with Ailes and his geeks we can make some headway.

  “Sounds good. Let me talk to Knoll.”

  “Hold on . . . You seeing this?” ask Ailes.

  I look over at the overhead screens. An image appears from inside the engine duct. The metal is dark green and rusty. But the thing we’re supposed to see stands out clear as day.

  The Warlock’s clue.

  A feather.

  A solitary white feather.

  20

  THE INSTANT THE feather appears on the screen, a group of forensic techs are on the phone with local zoos and universities tracking down an expert on plumage.

  Since I don’t know much about birds, other than how to hide them in a sequined tuxedo, I clear things with Knoll so I can head back to Quantico.

  Knoll’s standing over the shoulder of an agent who is flipping through online images of birds. “What can you tell us about birds, Blackwood?”

  “I got bit by my grandfather’s macaw when I was ten.” I still have the scar on my arm. A nasty bird, he clamped onto my arm when I was changing the newspapers in his cage.

  “Nice.” He turns away from the laptop. “What’s up?”

  “I was thinking I might be of more use in Quantico, now that the bomber is in forensics’ hands.” I gaze up at the screens showing the feather and photos of the plane.

  “You think Ailes and his group might make some headway?”

  “I think an unconventional approach might be helpful. There are still some things about the Chloe murders that should be pursued.”

  “The whole thing is nagging me,” replies Knoll.

  “Yeah. I just think there’s some deeper part to this. We’ve got two victims that can’t be who we think they are. The pilot’s fingerprint is likely a record switch. Something about the two Chloes . . .”

  “You don’t think the inferno was to destroy the evidence?”

  I shake my head. “I think he wanted an apocalyptic pyre. I think he wants us to think we know what he did. That he just found some girl that looked like Chloe and tried his best to pass her off as Chloe.”

  “Why?”

  I’ve been going over and over this. “To pull the rug out from under our feet. To get us to build false confidence so
he can destroy it.”

  “Destroy it? How?”

  “I’m not sure. The pilot we found is a dead ringer for the one that went missing in 1945. Our two Chloes are indistinguishable from what we can see. But there’s only one body to examine, a partial one at that. There’s something else . . .”

  Knoll nods his head. “And you think Ailes and his geek pack might have a better chance at breaking this than we do in the field?”

  “I think it’s just as important.”

  “All right. I’ll call you if we need you back here.”

  An hour later I’m sitting in the lounge at the Fort Lauderdale–Hollywood International Airport thinking about the fact that the men of the Flight 19 Avenger squadron were last seen just a few hundred yards from where I am. It’s a strange feeling.

  I’m trying to ignore the news on the television hanging over my head. They don’t have anything new to add. They just keep repeating the images of the Avenger on the sandbar and the pillar of fire at the cemetery. Even without the image of Chloe climbing out of the ground, it’s biblical enough. By now the connection between the two events is obvious, due to their apparently supernatural nature, and “Warlock” keeps showing up on the closed captioning.

  I imagine him laughing at us as he sits over his Dungeons & Dragons game board in his Batman underwear.

  On my laptop screen is the image of the feather. It’s obviously a big, bright, neon clue. Forensics had already identified it as a dove feather by the time I made it to the airport. I’m sure everyone in the conference hall is trying to figure it out.

  I’m afraid it’s a red herring. And if it’s not, it’s only going to make sense to us after we see what the Warlock has planned next. It’s a clue, but a distracting one. We can’t help but look at it and wonder. We’re trying to figure out what one hand is doing while the other has already palmed off the aces.

  The Warlock’s code on the FBI website wasn’t meant to be cracked until he was ready. Knowing where the sand came from wouldn’t have stopped him. It could have come from twenty miles in either direction. If he’d seen a stakeout, he probably would have dropped the plane elsewhere.

  But they’re not clues, are they?

  They’re calling cards.

  They’re his way of telling us that the next mystery is his creation. He thinks he’s too important to write us a note. He only wants to communicate through his miracles.

  This is how gods talk to mortals.

  Gods speak in symbols too. I’m sure there’s a pattern to what he’s doing. The airplane may have been a lucky break, but to him it symbolizes something.

  Chloe’s double was found in the grave. The airplane and body was found on a sandbar in the ocean.

  I try to think of how he wants us to see the illusion. The Chloe died crawling out of the ground. The dirt. The “pilot” died in the air.

  Earth.

  Air.

  Classical elements.

  I pull up the Wikipedia page on the classical elements. The Babylonians had five: earth, sky, fire, sea and wind. The Greeks were almost the same: air, fire, earth, water and aether.

  Aether. The Avenger pilot died from a lack of air. As if he flew into the space beyond the earth. The aether. Or the sky. Either one fits.

  I don’t know if this means anything, but I send an e-mail to the working group.

  Where does the feather fit in?

  If the Warlock’s using the Babylonian elements, then it’s the wind. The Greek, air. Either way, I suspect we can expect at least three more dark miracles from the Warlock. Trying to predict what they’ll be is pointless. Never in a million years would we have expected him to make it look as if he ripped a hole in time and pulled an airplane through it.

  His imagination has already exceeded our comprehension.

  As I think this over, CNN is showing footage from an old movie called The Philadelphia Experiment, another of my father’s favorites, in which a vortex opens up around a World War II naval ship, pulling it out of time. I shake my head in disbelief.

  The media are even supplying movie special effects to help build up his mystery. He’s such a goddamn made-for-television-news villain. Everyone, from theologians to fantasy authors, is chiming in with an opinion.

  The talking heads are quick to condemn the acts, but all of them have a sense of awe in their condemnations.

  Man-on-the-street interviews indicate regular people seem more focused on the illusion than the murdered people. But that’s the Warlock’s design. If we look at it from his point of view, he’s not a murderer. He’s a necromancer who gave Chloe life that she used to crawl out of the ground. He brought back a pilot who was supposed to have perished in an aircraft nobody ever thought would be seen again.

  The murders are ambiguous. Like a writer who doesn’t want to make a character good or evil, the Warlock is trying to have it both ways.

  I even see a hint of smiles on people’s faces as they offer their opinions on camera. They don’t see him as a murderer. Some of them are buying his story. This infuriates me.

  I’m about to write another e-mail, this one to Knoll, and demand that we call attention to what the Warlock really is. But I stop myself. Knoll knows. We all know. We can only report the facts. We can’t control how people think. Right now the Warlock is winning.

  I’ve been staring at the television for so long I don’t realize I’m being stared at by a man in a pilot’s uniform. He’s sitting across from me, several seats away.

  I look over at him and it takes a second for me to recognize him. He’s got brown eyes and his face looks rounder somehow.

  But it’s him.

  “Why the long face, Jessica?”

  Damian.

  Goddamn it.

  21

  DAMIAN CAN READ my reaction as I start to stand up.

  “Please don’t get the TSA over here. I haven’t done anything wrong. At least nothing that warrants involuntary sexual abuse.” He holds up his hands and smiles.

  “How about impersonating a pilot?” I think about calling an officer over so I can get a look at his ID.

  “It’s only a criminal act if I try to fly the plane.”

  “Well, isn’t stealing trains the gateway drug to that?”

  “I don’t bring up all your youthful indiscretions,” he smirks.

  “I didn’t have any.”

  “And that explains quite a lot about you. Not having any is the biggest one of all. It makes little girls grow up into authority figures who want to carry guns around and punish men.”

  I close the laptop on the image of the feather. “Why are you here?”

  “Two reasons. One, I don’t think you took my warning very seriously about being careful about this Warlock character.” In a relaxed gesture, he takes his pilot hat off and sets it in the chair next to him. “I don’t need to point out to you that you have the habit of attracting the unstable types.” He reaches down into his flight bag and pulls out a Sun-Sentinel newspaper and tosses it to me. “And there’s this. It’s a prepress of tomorrow’s edition.”

  I don’t even ask him how he got such a thing. The front page headline is the reappearance of the Avenger bomber and pilot alongside a photograph. There are several stories about the incident covering the history of Flight 19, our investigation and the Michigan murder.

  “I’ve highlighted the item I think you should be most mindful of.”

  I turn the page. It’s an article about the FBI’s pursuit of the Warlock. One sentence stands out.

  Sources close to the investigation say that the FBI has called in a specialist referred to as “the Witch” to help find the Warlock . . .

  I set the paper down and look at Damian. “This is stupid.”

  “Very. But did you see the photograph?”

  “What?” I open the paper again. The image shows several agents standing on the beach looking out at the airplane. I’m in the middle. My black hair flowing in the wind. I’m surrounded by several dozen lighter-hai
red and balding men.

  Damian mocks me. “I wonder which one is the Witch?”

  I throw the paper at him. “I don’t need this bullshit.”

  “Well, the good news is you look amazing in that photograph. Seriously. The bad news is I’m sure the Warlock feels the same way.”

  I want to dismiss his notion, but I know he’s perceptive about these things. He’s certifiable, but he’s brilliant.

  Damian is probably the greatest magician I’ve ever met. And it’s for one simple reason; the best magicians are the ones who live or die by their skills. Pickpockets. Card cheats. Damian’s whole life is a deception. When he’s not harassing me or pretending to be someone else, I suspect you’ll probably find him at a card table somewhere, slowly milking the house. Making big losses amid small wins that add up over time.

  He handles a deck of cards like nobody I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen the best in the world. Since I know he’s not staying practiced to perform at children’s birthday parties, I have to imagine it’s for gambling.

  I’ve always resisted the idea of asking him for help. I never want to be in debt to him. There’s really no bargaining with the devil. I know what he’s capable of doing. Still, if there’s anyone who can see through a deception, it has to be him.

  I give up fighting the question. “So what do I look out for?”

  Damian’s face changes to delight as he realizes I’m asking for his help. “He’s probably not walking around in a cape. Although I’m sure he’s dying for them to come back. He probably has one picked out with purple trim. No. He’s in love with this idea of the Warlock. It’s a character he created. He wants to be him. But he’s afraid to actually step into the role—to put himself in public as the Warlock. That’s why this is all about ideas. I bet he looks quite normal. Probably tries to use that as camouflage. Buys his clothes at Old Navy. Looks like a square. He’ll be hard to find. He blends right in.”