So here I am, only slightly the worse for wear, perched on the side of the canyon that Josh Gromelski chose for his climb. I look up, toward the place where he found the remains of Clara Gabler. But the crime scene is not – how did Holly Goldstein put it? – it’s not speaking to me. I finish the Clif Bar, thinking so what?
So the killer chose an inaccessible spot. So he cut Clara Gabler in half while she was alive. So he used a rotary saw. So he went to a lot of trouble to haul a bunch of stuff to a remote site. So the girls were auditioning for a magic act. So what? What does any of this have to do with Sean and Kev?
I pick up the Juicy Fruit wrapper and the four cigarette butts and twist them up in the Clif Bar wrapper, then stick the trash in my pocket along with the empty water bottle. Picking my way back down toward the canyon floor, I can’t believe I’m here, in the wilderness outside Las Vegas, chasing… I don’t know what. What am I doing? Liz is right. This is just another version of the gerbil wheel. I’m wasting time. I’m wasting money. This whole trip is self-indulgent.
I’m mad at myself, descending a tumble of boulders at a reckless speed, jumping from rock to rock in a knee-jarring, risky way, going down toward the canyon floor as fast as I can.
And then it hits me. Hits me with so much force that I lose concentration for a moment. The next thing I know I’m putting my foot down wrong, and then I’m falling, careening through space. I touch off one boulder, and then manage to launch myself toward a flat rock. A clumsy three-point landing rips the skin off my knees. I’m sprawled on a ledge above a twenty-foot drop-off. I watch my sunglasses cartwheel down the rocky slope, then lower my head and close my eyes.
I stay there for a few moments, the rock hot against my cheek, as a rush of sensation sweeps up my forearms. The prickly residue of adrenaline may come from the fall, but the fall itself came from the realization that hit me during my reckless descent.
Where were the Gablers found?
Conjure Canyon.
What were the Gabler girls auditioning for?
A magic act.
The crime scene photos of the women’s bodies pop into my mind’s eye, the upper and lower halves of Clara. Clara Gabler, cut in two. Severed by a power rotary saw, Chisworth guessed, a sweep from left to right across the torso.
In other words, not cut in half. Sawn in half.
They were on stage. That’s why they were wearing their costumes. It was a performance.
During which Clara Gabler was sawn in half. The blood seeping out of the box was real, the screams not the work of an actress but cries of pain and terror. Sawing a lady in half. And then the real live girl emerges, her two halves magically reunited.
Only in this case the trick was: there was no trick. There was a double. A twin.
I sit on my ledge, staring across the desert, across the sprawl toward the Strip. I pick gravel out of my shredded palm, doing my best to keep my mind focused on the Gabler girls. So Ezme Brewster was right. It was entertainment. A live show.
I stand up, ankle aching, rivulets of blood running down from my knees. My mouth is dry, my head hurts, the world before me seems to shimmer in and out of focus. I’m dehydrated. I squint against the glare, look for the best way down, start off toward the desert floor.
But motion doesn’t do the trick. I can’t keep my thoughts from cohering forever. I can’t really hold off the memory of the Sandling twins telling me their captor did tricks for them. What kind of tricks? Card tricks and coin tricks. “He made coins disappear.” Magic tricks.
Card tricks. Sawing a lady in half.
Twins in the first case, twins in the second.
Stumbling along the desert floor toward the parking area, I feel like a blind man on a cliff. I’m trying to hang on to my confusion and ignore the jolt of foreboding that hit me on my way down from the piñon tree.
But when I reach my car, open the windows, stand outside in the blast-furnace heat, there’s nothing for it. I can’t hold it off. The link is tenuous on the surface, but in my heart I know that Shoffler’s hunch was correct. There is a connection between the Gabler twins and the Sandlings and my sons, and the link is magic.
For the first time since the boys disappeared, I have an inkling of what might be in store for them and it drops me into a bleak despair. If I’m right, and the man who grabbed them is the same man who killed the Gabler sisters, The Piper isn’t just a killer, but a sadist. And not just a sadist, but an entertainer with a gift for pain and misdirection.
My sons are the raw material for a murder artist.
CHAPTER 25
I put in a call to Shoffler to tell him that I think his hunch may have been right on the money, that the link between the Gablers and my sons is one that we never would have come up with in a thousand years: magic. I want to talk it through with the detective, get his advice. But it turns out he’s in France for some kind of security conference. I leave a message.
I can intuit some of his advice, anyway. While I’m in Vegas, I should try to determine if The Piper worked here as a magician and follow out whatever other local leads I have.
Turns out, if it’s about magic, Vegas is the place to be. After three days, I’ve seen more doves and lighted candles materialize and disappear than I can count. It’s beginning to seem routine to me that a man in a tuxedo snaps his fingers and a dove or a duck – or a goose! – flutters into existence out of thin air. Or that he might turn a top hat upside down, thump it to show it’s empty, even call a volunteer to thrust a hand into its vacant interior. And then, with a wave of his wand, voilà! A rabbit. A real rabbit, which hops around on the stage, bewildered.
I’ve seen scarves and ropes and pieces of paper torn into shreds and restored to amazing intactness with the help of a few magic words. I’ve witnessed feats of mind reading, miraculous escapes, levitations, and dozens of transformations (a shred of paper into a bird, a ball into a rabbit, a doll into a woman, a piece of rope into a snake).
Any number of times, I’ve seen leggy beauties disappear, after which they step out, preening and smiling, from impossible and unexpected locations – the rear of the theater, for instance. At the San Remo, Showgirls of Magic (topless in the evening) are just what they sound like: leggy beauties doing tricks with cards and coins and, yes, bunnies.
After the shows, there are opportunities to buy merchandise; shops sell mementos of the performing magician, along with standard tricks and magic kits, reproduction posters, biographies of Houdini, books about magic.
It’s in these shops that I show my sketches of The Piper to magician clerks and cashiers, who perform card tricks and sleight of hand while they make change. I tell them the man in the sketch is a magician. Do they recognize him? A couple “think so,” but no one can put a name or place to the memory.
I’m getting myself a beer before the Lance Burton show when a bear of a man approaches me. “Boyd Veranek,” he says, “with a V. Pleased to meet you. Watch this.”
I get it – the guy’s going to do a magic trick. I don’t want to be his audience, but it’s crowded and without being rude, I can’t get away from him. He cups his huge pawlike hands together and pulls them slowly apart. In between his palms, a paper rose hovers and trembles in midair. He abruptly jerks his hands wide apart and the flower drifts toward the floor. He plucks it out of the air, holds it by the stem, and with a little bow, presents it to me.