Ben Tennyson Studies Magic

by csyphrett

Detectives Tennyson and Levin investigate a man falling down an elevator shaft

Ben Tennyson Studies Magic

1

The body lay at the bottom of the elevator shaft. The cab had been lifted to the second floor and locked in place. No one wanted it to come back down while they were working.

The first question was who the dead man was. That would prompt some information for the detectives leading the investigation to examine as they put things together.

"How did he wind up down there?," Detective Kevin Levin asked his partner. He looked around the elevator shaft.

"One of the elevator doors must have been open upstairs somewhere," said Detective Ben Tennyson. He looked up the shaft at the bottom of the car. "The cab must have been above him and then came down on top of him."

"No cameras on the floor," said Levin. "So we won't be able to see what happened."

"We need to have a forensics guy figure out which floor he fell from," said Ben. "That's a place we can go over for leads."

"Everything looks like an accident," said Levin. "Why are we here?"

"I guess to make sure it was an accident," said Ben. "As soon as we can get an identification, we can really get started looking at things."

The crime scene technicians and mortuary attendants scooped up the remains into a body bag. A wallet was produced to be put in a bag. Gloved hands showed Levin who the victim should be, and who they would have to confirm was the victim. He wrote down the name and address to be followed up on when the investigation got to it.

"We are going to need prints and DNA to confirm identity," said Tennyson. "We'll go by and see if he had any next of kin to inform."

"We'll have to work on his hand to get you prints, Ben," said one of the attendants. "Have to hydrate the skin back at the morgue."

"Do what you can," said Tennyson. "He might not have any record in the system. We'll need to be ready to go to court to show we have the right corpse."

"It would be embarrassing if we didn't," said the body snatcher. He waved at his colleague to help him lift the bag out of the bottom of the shaft so they could wheel him to their van.

"How many bodies get misidentified?," asked Levin.

"Three a year," said Tennyson. "It used to be ten until they put in the DNA search protocol."

"Okay," said Levin. "I didn't need to know that."

"There's a certain amount of fraud in some of the cases too," said Ben. He examined the shaft again. "Dave? We're going to need photos of this shaft and a mechanic to tell us if the elevator was actually working when it crushed the victim."

"Already got a call in to OTIS," said Dave. "Someone is supposed to come in and walk one of our guys through the safety list."

"Make sure they make a note of anything out of order," said Ben. "And pictures of the malfunction would be good."

"I'll let them know," said Dave. He started taking pictures of the inside of the elevator shaft.

"So what now, Columbo?," asked Levin.

"Dave?," said Tennyson.

"Yes, Ben," said the technician. He paused in his picture shooting.

"See if you can get prints from the inside of the elevator, the edges of the door, and the buttons," said Ben. "We're going to need the same thing when we figure out where he fell from upstairs."

"I'll do that when I finish with the pictures," said Dave.

"Thank you," said Ben. "Let's let them work, Kevin. We should walk up to the top floor and work our way down."

"What are we looking for?," asked Levin.

"A reasonable explanation for why a man would step into in elevator with no car," said Tennyson. "As soon as we figure out that question, we can ask the next one."

"This is an accident, right?," asked Kevin.

"I have no idea," said Tennyson. "Let's look at it as a fancy murder. Once we know how everything runs together, we can pass the buck to the district attorney on what kind of call he wants to make."

"If he rules it as an accident, this will be a lot of work for nothing," said Levin.

"If it comes down to murder, we'll be ahead of the game," said the other detective. He led the way to the building's stairs and started up them.

"This building has twenty floors," complained Levin.

"Just be glad you're not a tech who has to check for prints if we confirm which floor our dead guy fell from," said Ben. He kept climbing toward the top floor.

"I don't see how that is supposed to make me feel better," said Levin.

"It's not," said Tennyson. "I'm just mocking you at this point."

"You can do better than that," said Levin. He followed his partner and hoped there was a reason for all this.

"I can, but I'm saving it for Christmas," said Ben. He kept moving. If his partner wasn't with him, he would just press the buttons on the device on his wrist to give him something that was a fast flier.

That would solve part of his problem. The rest would be if he could find something to point to his accident not looking like an accident.

The partners walked out of the stairwell. They went down the hall. Tennyson examined the signs on the doors as they walked down to the elevator. Ben checked the device on his wrist as he closed on the shut metal doors.

"It looks like something was screwed to the walls," said Levin. He indicated screw heads sticking out of the plaster. "Maybe something was hung here."

"We need to document this," said Ben. "If he worked in one of these offices, he comes to the elevator. Something is going on to block his view of things. He steps in and falls to his death. Then someone called the elevator on top of him. Now we're dealing with the body."

"You think that is what happened?," asked Levin.

"I don't know," said Ben. "I like it as a theory. The main problem is whomever did this took away the only evidence we have that something was here, and screwheads aren't conclusive to anything."

"We still need to check the other doors to see if these screws are on them," said Levin.

"You're right about that," said Ben. "Hold the area down, and I'll get Dave to come up and take pictures, and check the other doors."

"All right," said Levin. He took out his flash and shone it around. "Do you think some kind of screen was here?"

"I don't know," said Ben. "I just think these screws are too much of a coincidence with the dead guy being at the bottom of the elevator shaft."

"It does seem weird," said Levin. "If he worked up here, that would explain why he was on this floor."

"He either worked up here, or he was visiting someone up here," said Ben. "We might have to do a canvas in the daytime and show his picture around."

"I have a feeling there will be something stupid when we get to the bottom of this," said Levin. "Even if this was nothing more than a stupid accident."

"I don't think it was an accident," said Ben. "Let me get Dave. We'll see if the rest of the stops has screws in the walls. If it's just this floor, then this is where our victim fell from."

"Then we try to figure out who had the motive," said Levin. "We might need a witness to clear this one."

"I'll be back once I talk to Dave," said Ben. "Then we'll have to figure out what we can about the businesses up here. Then we need to come back and talk to these people in the daytime to see if any of them knew the victim."

"All right," said Levin. "I'll make a note in case we have to dig in to their employees."

"Good thinking," said Ben. "We might need warrants if we have to start really digging."

"Dorman's Maxim strikes again," said Levin.

"If this was about money," said Ben. "I'll be right back."

He walked into the stairwell and pushed the button on his watch. He glided down the stairs at a faster pace than going up, but not so fast that there would be embarrassing questions about how he had descended to the ground floor so fast.

He decided to check the elevator walls on the way back up to make sure they had a singularity.

He walked across the lobby to the elevator. He saw Dave on a step ladder. The tech brushed the edges of the vertical tunnel with something to reveal any hidden prints.

"We're going to need you on the top floor, Dave," said Ben. "We're going to need pictures and prints."

2

Ben sat at his desk in the conference room he had taken over to run cases. He had various cases on whiteboards around the room. Some of them were waiting on warrants so they could be cleared. Some belonged to other detectives in his squad who had asked him to look at the facts and suggest a fresh approach.

His elevator death was the freshest one, not filling up the space for it yet.

He regarded the facts that he did have in his possession at the moment, and they didn't quite add up to anything beyond a bizarre accident.

Robert Houdin rented one of the offices on the twentieth floor. He was a financial adviser and was doing good for himself at the moment. Taking a copy of his photo identification had netted them the office and his small staff.

His employees agreed that Houdin worked late all the time so it was not unusual for him to be in the building by himself. They didn't know anything about his private life except he was divorced and had two adult children. The divorce seemed to have chilled him on getting involved romantically with other people since he never talked about dating, online services, or Facebook connections.

They would have to talk to the wife and kids sooner, or later. At that moment, they were maybe sources of background information other than suspects. And one of the kids, Robert, Junior, lived across the country.

He might have driven, or flown, into the city, set up an elaborate trap, and then went home to wait on the notification. It was an outside possibility, and Ben would ask for an alibi when he called, but it was not something he considered seriously.

Ben and Kevin had searched the other floors and the twentieth was the only one with the screwheads in the wall. Levin had checked with the building maintenance and those screws were not supposed to be there.

The man from OTIS and people from the lab had gone over the elevator and the electronic records. The elevator had been called to pick up Houdin around the time of his death. Then it had descended to the ground floor. No stops from the lobby to the top, or the other way.

Smudged fingerprints and clear fingerprints were on the walls around the screwheads. The forensics people thought that maybe someone had touched the wall with gloves on, and that was what had left the smudges.

The clear latents were probably people touching the wall in passing as they got on or off of the elevator.

He still had no idea if he was looking at an accident, or a clever murder disguised as an accident.

Kevin came into the conference room. He had a batch of printouts in his hand. He placed them on the table.

"What are those?," asked Ben.

"I ran a record check of everyone Houdin called in the last month," said Kevin. "I checked the numbers. Most of them are his clients, or friends of his clients. A couple were spammers wanting to sell stuff. And calls from his family. He gets a call from his office right before he steps into the elevator."

"You're kidding me," said Ben.

"The problem is no one else was supposed to be on the twentieth, and his staff had gone home for the day," said Kevin. "They signed out with the guard at the desk as they left."

"Let me write that down," said Ben. "Did you alibi the staff?"

"As soon as I saw someone called from his office," said Levin. "I checked with the guys downstairs. They said someone could have spoofed the number and called as a distraction."

"The caller didn't want him paying attention to his surroundings," said Ben. He wrote that down under the fake call note. "It gives us something with the how things were done, but not why, who, what, or when."

A knock sounded on the door. The detectives looked at each other. Ben opened the door. He nodded when his cousin, Gwen, smiled at him. He stepped aside so she could enter the room.

"So this is the center of your operation," she said. "I expected more computers to tell you the answers."

"I have been working like this as a new methodology," said Ben. "It helps me think. What brings you out of the lab?"

"The guys downstairs said they found something odd," said Gwen. "They didn't know if you wanted to know, so I told them that it would be best to let you know in case it meant something."

"Go ahead," said Ben. He sat down at the computer desk he used for his cases.

"The elevator gave a signal that said it went up and down with no stops," said Gwen. "Our guys and the guy we grabbed from OTIS found something. It says the elevator went all the way up the shaft past the office floor you guys are interested in."

"Did they say how they know this?," asked Ben. "Because we're going to have to explain it to a jury at some point."

"They think someone hacked the signal," said Gwen. "There's actually a twenty first floor so the elevator can give maintenance access to the roof. The elevator reads like it just went to the twentieth, stopped, and came down. Instead it went up to the hidden floor before it started coming down. And the victim steps into the shaft and freaks the security people out until he hits the ground."

"That explains a lot of the how," said Ben. "I like it. Now we have to start piecing together what we can about the why and who. I'm going to need you to be able demonstrate the elevator thing for Captain Wei."

"It should be easy enough to do," said Gwen. "We just need someone who can hack the simple computer for the elevator and give it the command. I don't know how you are going to explain why Houdin stepped into the shaft when an elevator would be visibly absent."

"Because he was on his phone," said Ben. "That was why he was called with the spoofed office number."

"I don't understand," said Gwen.

"Houdin got a call from his office right before he died," said Levin. He smiled. "All we need to know is would he have seen the elevator was empty while he was on his phone."

"Kevin, we're looking for someone who is computer savvy," said Ben. He wrote that down on the board. "I'm going back to the building. I think we can test this out."

"He'll also have a grudge against Houdin to go to all this trouble," said Levin. "It looks like a magic trick, doesn't it?"

"It does," said Ben. "The murderer made the victim commit suicide. Give me a good simple shooting any time."

"We're going to need his client list, aren't we?," asked Levin.

"Yes," said Ben. "Ask Dorman to get you the warrant. I doubt Houdin's people will be able to give the information without one."

"Anything else?," asked Kevin. Sifting paperwork was not his idea of a fun time.

"Look around and check for any other weird accidents like this," said Ben. "Most of the police involved would have wrote it off as something one in a million. It would never occur to them that someone committed the perfect murder."

"I see what you are saying but I don't like that thought at all," said Levin.

"If he did this one as tricky as it is, why wouldn't he do others?," said Ben. "Check in Houdin's financial circle first. Then we can take another look at others outside of that."

"All right," said Levin. "I expect you to help out when you are done with your geekdom."

"It will probably take all day to get a warrant and serve it," said Ben. "I'll do the weird deaths when I get back. It should be a snap."

"You think the murderer is one of Houdin's clients," said Levin.

"They have to be ruled out," said Ben. "If one of them is a disgruntled hacker and magic enthusiast, he gets put on as our number one suspect."

"Yeah," said Levin. "Let me get some coffee and talk to Dorman about this warrant. Then we can go down and serve it for your precious client list."

"I'll be down there with the boys from the lab checking out their theory," said Ben. "I'll help you bring the paper trail back."

"Disgruntled hacker magicians," said Levin as he left the conference room. "What will we be chasing next?"

"I'll get some of the lab guys and the OTIS guy, and head down to the building," said Gwen.

"All right," said Ben. "I'll be waiting for you to get there."

He walked out of the conference room and headed for the stairwell. He pressed the buttons on his watch. It flared green. He ran down the steps and crossed the lobby before anyone could see him. He hit the street and the wind marked his passage until he slowed down at the scene of the crime.

He cut the booster off as he walked into the lobby. He took a moment to talk to the guards to let them know that the lab crew was coming down to look things over again. Then he stepped into the stairwell and rushed up to the twentieth floor.

He switched boosters and walked the hall, making notes in his book. He found a spot they had ignored the first time. It looked like a small camera had been set up. The murderer had taken the camera with him when he was done.

So he had been in the building and slipped out before a cordon had been set up, definitely before the homicide squad had shown up.

"Maybe his rabbit assistant had warned him we were on the way," Ben told himself.

Ben walked up and down the hall with his booster on, before cutting it off. If he was right about a mounted camera, then Houdin was murdered by some kind of remote access.

Why seemed to be the biggest question he needed to answer. If it was a serial killing, it was the fanciest serial killing he had ever heard of. Dorman's maxim had to be in effect unless there was some kind of emotional thing they didn't know about yet.

He didn't like emotional crimes. They came out of nowhere, and were almost always built on rage and stupidity. Some of them became whodunnits because the only connection was something like an altercation in a parking lot over a space.

Give him something with a motive, a means, and an opportunity that went beyond who had a gun in their car and decided to use it.

Gwen and the boys from the lab showed up. Then a guy in service clothes with OTIS on the front of his shirt. He nodded at the techs and Gwen as he put his tool box down on the floor next to the elevator.

"Ben, this is Terry Koontz," said Gwen. "He is the expert we have been working on with the elevator."

"Nice to meet you," said Koontz. "Miss Tennyson said you had some questions."

"Yes, I do," said Ben. "Gwen said you found a signal that told the elevator to go all the way up past this floor."

"Yep," said Koontz. "When we put in elevators, we typically place them so the top floor is where the housing for the pulleys and things are. The elevator comes to a rest just under that. Depending on the building, sometimes there are braces across the top of the shaft to keep the elevator cab from accidentally hitting the machinery."

"So the elevator could go beyond this floor and leave the shaft empty," said Ben.

"Yep," said Koontz. "But the doors aren't supposed to open without a signal from the elevator to open them."

"But these did," said Ben. "Can you show me how that was done?"

"Yep," said Koontz.

3

Kevin Levin arrived as the crew demonstrated for Ben what they thought had happened. There was no proof beyond the artifact signal Koontz was able to show caused the elevator to go up to the real top floor of the building.

"I got the warrant," said Levin. "Does the trap thing work?"

"Yes," said Ben. "Show Detective Levin what we are going to show a court is the weapon, Mister Koontz."

"All right," said Terry. He worked a portable keyboard he had hooked into the elevator button pad and forced the door open with no elevator cab in the shaft.

"Houdin steps in without thinking and falls to his death," said Ben. He made a motion with his arm to indicate the direction of movement.

"So who did it?," said Levin.

"Got no idea," said Ben. "Anybody have any ideas?"

The forensics crew around them all gave negative answers and motions. Gwen frowned at the detectives. Koontz said nope.

"All right," said Levin. "Let's serve this paper and see what it gets us."

"We might not have a client seeking revenge on Houdin," said Ben. "We might have a weird serial killer on our hands."

"Don't say it like it's great," said Levin. "This could be a career buster for us."

"As long as I have an ability to arrest someone for murder, I'm good," said Ben. "I'm not trying to take Wei's office."

"I would like Flowers's so I can order people to get me a donut," said Levin.

"I can see that," said Ben.

They entered the office of Houdin Finances. It was understated in decorations and carpeting. Ben thought it did not look like millions of dollars were flowing through the place.

"Hello," said Levin. He held up his badge. "I am Detective Kevin Levin, and this is Detective Tennyson. We have a warrant for the client list of the office. We might need more information about particular people as we go forward."

"What does that have to do with the accident?," asked the secretary.

"It wasn't an accident," said Ben. "We're going to check the whole list, but did Mister Houdin have any clients that stood out to you?"

"What do you mean?," said the lady at the desk.

"Has Mister Houdin had trouble with any of his clients?," asked Ben.

"We're looking for anybody who want to kill Mister Houdin," said Levin. "Do you know anybody like that?"

"There were a couple," said the counter lady. "I can't believe that they would do anything like this. Mister Kiser is almost eighty."

"Give me a list," said Levin. "We'll start weeding them out first. Then we're going to work through the rest."

"Did he have problems with the staff?," said Ben. They had talked to the other managers, but he didn't think anybody had said anything about the front counter person.

"No," said the counter lady. "Mister Houdin rarely interacted with anyone after the staff meetings. He spent hours running trades and doing things for his clients. I can't remember him spending any personal time outside of the meetings."

"Workaholic?," asked Levin.

"I sometimes thought he never left the office and was living here to be close to the business," said the counter lady.

"Did you have problems with him?," said Levin.

"No," said the counter lady. The phone rang. She put the call on hold. "I think he barely realized I was alive."

"We're going to need your name to go with the client list and where you were the last two days," said Levin. "I doubt you're our murderer, but the captain will want to know why I didn't ask."

"My name is Harriet Hartly," said the counter lady. "I was home for most of yesterday. The day before I worked a half-day, visited the hospital and talked to some emergency people and was released about fifteen hours later. They told me I had some mild food poisoning."

"So you weren't at your desk the day Houdin fell down the elevator?," asked Levin.

"No," said Miss Hartly. "Is that significant?"

"Everything is," said Ben. "Let's get that client list and we'll start looking at them for suspects."

"Let me talk to Miss Murphy and then I'll print it up for you," said Miss Hartley. She stepped away from the counter to go back to an office beyond her protective barrier.

"She wasn't here," said Ben. He frowned at the room. He turned and looked back. "She would have seen the set up for the murder from here. How much you want to bet her food poisoning was intentional?"

"It means we're dealing with a mastermind," said Levin. "I don't like that at all."

"Everyone makes a mistake," said Ben. "I don't think he counted on us thinking about sabotage. How many cops would have looked at those screws and thought they were out of place and checked them? Anybody else would have written everything off as a terrible accident. The problem is how many more murders were committed before this. The exact number can't be known because of the way he sets things up. The only thing worse is if this was random, or a hit."

"It's like the serial killers who get caught, but no one knows how many they killed before they were caught," said Levin. "That makes this even worse if that's the case."

"I have a feeling that I will feel a lot of paranoia before this is over," said Ben.

"Tell me about it," said Levin.

Miss Hartly and a thin middle-aged woman with frosted hair joined them at the desk. The assumed Miss Murphy had a small stack of papers in her hands.

"Detective Levin," said Miss Murphy. "I would like you to keep this client list out of the paper, please."

"We're going to do the best we can," said Ben. "We are thinking that someone decided to kill your employer and we're hoping to find a suspect in your list because of the method. Do you know if any of your clients hated Mister Houdin enough to kill him?"

"Not off the top of my head," said Miss Murphy. "We actually make money for the vast majority of our clients. The five percent who lost money did not lose more than what we recovered for them. Our firm does not risk more than we can put down so our clients almost always get their profit out of the trade."

"Who owns the business now?," said Levin.

"We're all partners, so I suppose we all own it," said Murphy. "And yes, we all make money from that, and we have had some spats with Mister Houdin, but nothing beyond you should leave the office more, Robert. He was overworking himself for his accounts."

"Thank you, Miss Murphy," said Ben. "Miss Hartley said she was sick yesterday. Who ran the desk for you?"

"We hired a temp from an agency," said Miss Murphy. She walked around to the counter and copied the agency's name on a post-it note and handed it over. "Her name was Melba. I don't remember the last name."

"We'll try to look her up," said Ben. "Thank you. We might have more questions for you the deeper into the investigation we get."

"I thought it was an accident," said Murphy.

"We did too," said Ben. "But our science guys have found someone hacked the elevator. So we might have an accidental death, or someone moved the elevator on purpose."

"All right," said Miss Murphy. "That seems elaborate like a Rube Goldberg machine."

"I know," said Ben. "It seems incredibly unlikely. Have a good day."

He made sure they had the list, and the post it note before they left the office.

"All right," said Levin. "What's a Rube Goldberg machine?"

Ben examined the set up at the elevator again. He looked around. He stood at the screwheads. He looked back at the office. He could see Miss Hartley answer the phone.

"A Rube Goldberg machine is something invented by a cartoonist a long time ago," said Ben. "It's something with a lot of moving parts to do something like sounding an alarm clock. That's what we have here. Houdin comes down from his office. He gets called on his phone from his office, maybe as the elevator doors open up. He steps inside the shaft and falls to his death. Did he look back at the office at just the wrong time so he wouldn't know to stop himself? Was that what the phone call was for?"

"Someone was watching him is what you are saying," said Kevin. "They had a plan and they put it in motion."

"There was a space for a camera on the wall," said Ben. "What was on these screws? If we knew that, I think we would know why Houdin got in the elevator without looking around."

"How do you want to handle the rest of this?," said Levin.

"I am going to go through the client list and look around for other weird deaths," said Ben. "Did you get far on the search?"

"I didn't get far on the search," said Levin. "There were a couple that looked strange. They were put down as accidents like we thought. I called over to the detectives involved. I'm waiting on a callback."

"All right," said Ben. "We'll have to look at any crime scene photos of the scene. They might have been test runs for this."

"I got it," said Levin. "I'll take those if we still have them."

"They might not have been kept," said Ben. "We have to take a look like we expect to uncover a lead in a cold case."

"I hate these things," said Levin. "Give me a shooting any day."

"Smart criminals make smart cops," said Ben.

"I don't need to be that smart," said Levin. He handed over the client list.

"Do me a favor and go over what we have about Houdin again," said Ben. "I'll go over all the other stuff. Maybe between us we can come across a moment our killer and Houdin met. Then we have to check that against any other victims we think happened even if we can't prove anything now."

"Got it," said Levin. "It will give us papers to file so Dorman doesn't come down to ask us what we are doing."

"I think we have two options and I don't like either one," said Ben. "Unless we can sort everything out, we're going to have to think about how we can prove either option. The first option is that Houdin was killed by someone he knew that was an expert computer user and figured out how to move the elevator without triggering the safeties. The other option is we have a crazy serial killer that we might not be able to catch unless he makes a really bad mistake."

"The first option gives us a way to track him if we uncover the motive," said Levin. "The second means a task force and years of trying to track this guy if he is smart enough."

"I know," said Ben. "I don't want to spend years of trying to catch some invisible man."

"Houdin worked all the time," said Levin. "That explains why he was killed here in his building. It suggests someone who knows his habits."

"And he has no way of watching the guy up here, and his office is facing the inside of the building," said Ben. "So how did he get the information needed? How many cameras did he plant?"

"Maybe he wired the office," said Levin. "You said there was a spot that looked like a camera had been mounted and taken down."

"He could have," said Ben. "Are the taps still there?"

Levin shrugged.

Ben and Levin joined the forensics guys and Koontz packing their equipment up in cases to take back downstairs.

"Gwen?," asked Ben. "Can you do me a favor?"

"I guess," said Gwen. She frowned at her cousin. "What do you need?"

"Do you have any way to check for microphones, or hidden cameras?," said Ben.

"I think I have some things downstairs," said Gwen. "Why?"

"Could you get that and ask Houdin's partners to search their office for electronic devices?," said Ben. "If you find anything, we're going to need it listed as evidence."

"Sure," said Gwen. "I can do that. So you think the victim was watched before he took his dive?"

"It's possible, and we want to rule it out," said Ben. "If we have to get a search warrant, I will check with Dorman over probable cause, but I feel like Miss Murphy will be glad to know her office isn't being recorded."

"All right," said Gwen. "I will talk to her and we'll sweep her place if she gives us permission."

"Thanks," said Ben. "We're going to see if we can make sense out of this client list and try to pick out suspects we can focus on until we get something we can hook into."

"A murder looking like an accident is going to be hard to prove in court," said Gwen. "You better hope you get a persuasive prosecutor for this."

"As soon as Kevin gets on the stand, we'll get a conviction," said Ben.

"I do have the gift of gab," said Levin. "My father gave it to me."

"We'll see about that," said Gwen. "Let me get things organized and I'll call with the results."

"If you do find something to take back to the lab," said Ben. "We're going to need to trace any signal."

"Don't worry," said Gwen. "My people can do their jobs."

Ben nodded. He waved at Levin as he started down the stairs.

"Why couldn't he have killed this guy on the ground floor?," complained the other detective as they started down the long descent.

4

Ben loved his phone/computer hook up that he had put together. It saved him a lot of time. He just scanned the names of the client list with his phone. The computer reached across the world and gathered everything it could from every source he had hooked to it. Then it sent profiles for him to put on his boards if he had to do that.

It was a time saver, and probably unethical as anything. When he went to court, he had a burner phone with the pertinent information on it for whatever case he was a witness in, but his modified phone was kept hidden so it couldn't confiscated for discovery.

There was no way he was going to allow his pocket hacker out of his custody because someone wanted to look at some notes he might have taken on it.

It was just as valuable as his omni in his opinion.

Unfortunately none of Houdin's clients seemed to have a motive to kill him with a trick elevator, and the ones with the knowhow in their backgrounds had made more money than he could spend for the rest of his life from the financial manager.

Unless there was some kind of personal interaction going on he didn't know about yet, he might have to dismiss the client list as a list of suspects.

And all of these people had enough money to hire someone to hit Houdin if they had the contacts for it.

He still needed to call them and ask them where they were and what their personal dealings with Houdin was like. He wasn't looking forward to that.

Have you any reason to kill your money man like a cheating wife never went over well in his opinion.

Ben also had his computer sort through recent accidents in the metro area. He let those print out. Once he had a list, he could start sorting through and see if there was something he could follow up on.

He doubted he would be able to narrow things down, but there might be something there he could use to figure out a pattern. Once he had that, he could go to Dorman and Wei and see what they wanted to do.

If he and Levin had stumbled on a Jigsaw-type killer, he could see the case being handed over to a task force by Chief of Detectives Flowers. He also foresaw that they wouldn't be on such a task force.

Flowers hated him for making him look bad. There was no way he would let the partners on such a case. And Ben thought a task force would fail, but he conceded that might be hubris.

"You got anything?," asked Levin. He came in with a cup of coffee, sipping at it as he pulled up a chair.

"No," said Ben. "I have profiles for the clients, but I don't have any motives for them wanting to kill the man making them a ton of money. I was getting ready to go through any notices for weird accidents first. I admit I would rather have someone else do this grunt work, but we're going to have to check alibis."

"The temp is Malbe Le Croix," said Levin. "She worked the one day, and said that Houdin's firm is on a rotating basis with the temp agency. They have three receptionists other than Miss Hartley and when one of them has to take a day, she fills in. She said she hadn't noticed anything weird with Houdin, but thought Murphy was committing some sexual harassment on some of the guys working there."

"I'll put it down, but unless she picked up some electronics skills off the books, I don't see her rigging the elevator on her own," said Ben.

"She did say she saw a guy in an overall futzing with the elevator, but she didn't get a good look at him," said Kevin. "So we know someone worked on the elevator the day of the accident. Building maintenance doesn't have a record. I checked as soon as I was done with the interview."

"So we know someone was on the scene," said Ben. "Good job on that."

"It doesn't get us anything we can use," said Levin.

"It might," said Ben. "So we know these murders will be ruled as accidents. Let's sort out the ones we know we can rule out as not our guy and see if we can find any more victims. If this is a one off crime, we won't have to form a task force to man the phones and go over everything. If we can find something suspicious, then we can put it in a maybe column until we can rule things out."

"A lot of these will not have any evidence," warned Levin.

"We're looking for strange things," said Ben. "We can rule out most auto accidents automatically, work accidents, and anything that has a reasonable explanation. What we want is things that make you shake your head with no one but the victim was around."

"Let's see what we can do," said Levin.

They sorted through the reports and at the end of it, they found four deaths that could fit into their profile. Ben noted names and started calling. He wanted more information on what had happened.

"Please don't be a serial killer," Levin said to himself. "Please don't be a serial killer."

"Okay," said Ben, after his last call. "I'm running the victims. I'm going down to the scenes and look around."

"I'm going with you," said Levin. "Two sets of eyes are better than one."

Ben nodded. Levin liked chasing people. He didn't like the mounds of paperwork they had to sort as part of their job. He appreciated that because his partner would chase a suspect across the city faster than he liked to go through financials looking for a motive. That let Tennyson sit back and think about what they had to do to secure their conviction.

Tennyson told his machine to look for connections between the four accidents and Houdin. If they could find one, that would make their work a lot easier.

He posted up the client list on the board before they rolled out to look at their potential crime scenes.

He hoped Levin was right in his prayer. He didn't want to deal with a serial killer as smart as this one.

He would rather Houdin be cheating on someone and that someone had taken revenge other than chasing a motiveless crime. Those were the hardest to crack sometimes.

Levin drove as Ben thought about the accidents report back on his desk. This would be harder to prove as a murder compared to the one they already had. But if they could, that would be one more link to their suspect. They would be able to follow those links back to the man.

The two went over all the suspected crime scene sites. They had to ask for permission to get into private residences. Ben used his omni to record everything and compare it to other scenes he had seen. He was unsure of one of the accidents. The other three looked like the work of their guy.

Magic tricks that ended in executions was the order of the day.

He would need to look at the traps and see if there was something he could use to trace the parts back to the responsible man.

Ben was also making the forensics people mad at him because he was asking for sweeps of the area for cameras and microphones.

"What do you think?," said Levin. He ate a taco as they paused on the way back to the station. "I'm not buying that someone blew themselves up with a grill and drove a spatula into his brain."

"He would have been on top of it when it blew," said Ben. His watch had shown him how to do the same thing with a new grill.

"So these three are certainly the work of our guy, and the one maybe could be the same but we don't have enough to know," said Levin. "This guy is messed up."

"What was the motive?," asked Ben. "I didn't see anything obvious."

"Neither did I," said Kevin. "Maybe a background check will tell us something."

"Maybe they're connected to Houdin in some way," said Ben. "Straight revenge is a motive we can prove if we can find out what caused everything."

"That's exactly what I was thinking," said Levin. He finished his food. "I will be glad to shoot this guy if we do catch up to him. I don't like all these booby traps placed everywhere."

"I know," said Ben. "I hope that we can find this guy. He's smart enough to get away with it if we can't suss anything out. My win rate will drop like a rock."

"Even if we do catch up with him," said Levin. "How do we prove he rigged a grill to kill somebody? The evidence is already gone."

"I'll think of something," said Ben. "Maybe there were pictures taken we can look at to get a feel of what the scene looked like. Maybe autopsy reports even if these murders were ruled as accidents."

"So the next step is to call the Fire Department and see if they got anything," said Levin.

"Also we'll need to talk to the responding officers," said Ben. "Maybe someone took notes we can use."

"So we make a lot of phone calls and see if we can find something we can put on the board," said Levin.

"If any of the four have a connection to Houdin, that might make our job easier," said Ben.

"A connection leads to motive which leads to an identity," said Levin. "I hope so."

"And if we can't solve it, we can say we're wrong and Houdin died in a terrible accident and we wasted the city's money," said Ben. "Our bad. Next case."

"I hope you like Flowers crawling up inside of you again with that kind of attitude," said Levin.

"I investigate murders, I don't bend to politicians," said Ben. "Let's head back to the office and start those phone calls. We still have a lot of work to do."

"Maybe we can get the rest of the crew to help us," said Levin. "Boone loves this stuff."

"It can't all be beating someone down with a phone book," said Ben.

"But what if it was?," said Levin.

"You will still have to find the right guy to beat down," said Ben.

"That's what I got you for," said Levin.

"Thanks," said Ben. "I always wanted to be a Great Dane that finds clues."

"You would look better," said Levin. He threw his trash away. They got in the car and headed back downtown to the station house so they could make their calls.

Ben's computer linked the four victims with Houdin while they were on the road. That made them smile when they saw it.

5

Ben looked at his boards. He had a giant raft of information on his elevator case. He had profiles of his four other victims placed to one side. The computer record search had come through for him.

What could he do with it? If he knew that, the case would close itself.

He understood why the other murders had passed as accidents. There was no review board in the world that would say anything to the detectives and firemen that had investigated. It had been luck that he and Levin had grabbed the one murder that had left something to show it was more than it seemed.

How could they use it to track down their suspect?

At least they had a connection between the five victims. All of them were in school together. They all belonged to the same club. That gave him a connection to follow. It gave him a suspect pool if he could find out about the five while they were young.

If it was just Houdin, they could search on the client list and not find anything. Now they had to look for a web between the victims other than going to school.

What was the motive?

Levin came into the room. Wei and Dorman followed him into the conference room. None of them looked happy.

"What is the status of your case?," said Wei. He folded his arms over his chest.

"I have no idea," said Ben. He rubbed his chin as he looked at all the information he had assembled.

"We think we're dealing with an expert mechanic and electronics guy who has rigged up five murders as accidents," said Levin. "I may never use a grill again."

"All right," said Ben. "I will summarize everything for you, but right now the only idea I have is to probe into the victims' backgrounds and see if they had things in common other than their school days. As far as we can tell, they moved in different circles after they left school.

"Robert Houdin, Ian Kreskin, Alex Black, Harry Anderson, and Tommy Carnaki grew up in roughly the same neighborhood, went to the same schools, formed a magic club in high school. After high school, they split apart and as far as we can tell never talked to each other again.

"Houdin became a successful money manager, Kreskin was a geologist, Black was a lounge singer, Anderson became a judge, and Carnaki became a doctor. They all had suspicious accidents in the last month. We stumbled over this because of Houdin, but once we started thinking he was murdered, we sifted the others out."

"Five victims with no connections other than their school magic club?," said Dorman.

"So barring the fact that four accidents and a murder that looks like an accident is our jump off point," said Ben. "There's no way we can prove that the first four were anything but accidents at this point. Houdin's death was confirmed a murder by the forensics team and the elevator company. Someone hacked his elevator at the time of his death and we think that's what caused it."

"So the theory is the killer is connected to the magic club somehow," said Wei. "Why?"

"That's the only time they were together, and the M.O. points to one killer hating all of them," said Ben. "The problem is we don't have a motive for such elaborate booby traps unless there's some kind of deranged jealousy going on."

"And that will be harder to prove than anything reasonable," said Dorman.

"Exactly," said Ben. "Kevin and I had planned to swing by the school and see if we could talk to anyone who knew the five of them then, or see if we could find any of their classmates and ask them about anything that might have happened."

"Check the news first," said Wei. "If it was big enough, it might have been reported on."

"The traps have to tie into the motive," said Dorman. He scratched the back of his balding head as he looked at the gathered information. "So if we knew what happened then, that might tell us what's going on now."

"The only good thing about this is his original targets are dead," said Levin. "He might stop, or he might take things to the next level and we have a flurry of accidental murders for everyone that has crossed our murderer since high school."

"Let's hope that he doesn't have any more targets, but we should be ready for if he does," said Wei. "I'll send out a bulletin for Fire and uniforms to hold any scene that doesn't look right for us."

"Whatever is going on, this guy is pro and knows his business," said Dorman. "If we figure out who he is, and try to take him at his house, SWAT will have to be warned about potential traps on the premises."

"See what you can dig up," said Wei. "I don't like this impossible murder stuff, but once we take away some of the smoke and mirrors, maybe we'll have something we can turn over to be prosecuted. That part is going to be a nightmare."

"But it won't be our nightmare," said Dorman. "Go do what you got to do."

Wei and Dorman left the conference room. The other detectives on the squad had normal cases they had to review to see how close they were to being wrapped up and sent over for trial.

"How sure are you about this school thing?," asked Levin.

"I'm not really," said Ben. "I think it's closer to what we need than going through Houdin's client list and seeing how many had connections to all five of our dead men."

"Which is probably something we couldn't check on without warrants for their electronics and months of lab time," said Levin.

"Maybe years of lab time," said Ben. "It's probably good that I can't get Reliable to do that, or I would abuse the crap out of breaking into suspects' phones and recording everything they are doing."

"Flowers would can you in front of a lawsuit about rights violations," said Levin. "I wouldn't mind checking on some old girlfriends though."

"And that is how the slippery slope starts," said Ben.

"I don't know a thing about that," said Levin.

Ben set the computer to checking old news stories from the city's papers. Maybe the search engines would come up with something they could use. He wondered if what they were looking at was a cold case from when the five were in school.

Maybe their murderer thought the five of them had murdered someone else and was finally taking revenge.

It was a provable motive in court if they could dig up enough evidence to support the claim.

"Let's drive down to Thunstone and see what we can find out," said Ben. "We're lucky it's still a high school with the way the city has been redistricting everything."

"We'll be even luckier if we can find an original staffer who knows these five guys," said Levin.

"Let's start with the yearbooks now that we know what year they went," said Ben. "That might give us something we can use."

"It'll give us classmates we can look up and see if they remember anything," said Levin. "And if we're right, it means the students with them are our suspect pool."

"We'll have to run background checks and rule out people who have died since then," said Ben. "It's a lot more grunt work for us."

"Tell me about it," said Levin. "If we do find someone likely, how do you want to approach it?"

"We can't really do anything without probable cause," said Ben. "If we can secure that, I think we should look through the financials first to see if we have a lot of strange equipment bought with a credit card, or bank card."

"We need to have Gwen's gang look at those accidents and see if they can do the same thing," said Levin. "That'll give us a general list of what we should look for if we do get that far."

"Good idea," said Ben. "Wait, stay in your lane. I'm the brains of this outfit."

"Whatever," said Levin.

Ben sent a text with Levin's idea. It was something they could use. He sent copies of the reports too. Gwen would love it. It was a Mythbusters episode in the making.

They drove down to Thunstone and parked across the street from the old place. It had been put in when the city wanted vertical standing over a sprawl. Newer schools were set up like colleges with different buildings housing different classes.

"Let's start at the offices," said Ben. "If we can find someone we can talk to, that's fine. If we can get copies of the yearbooks, that's better. Then all we need to do is call and find the people we need to question."

"Yearbooks will be in the office, or down in the library," said Levin. "If they have them."

"Right," said Ben. "I wonder how much of this we can use."

"Maybe our next case will be a straight shooting that we don't have to wade through a mountain of paper to close," said Levin.

"I would love a domestic where the murderer turns himself in without all the fake missing persons stuff," said Ben.

"A cold case that has a confession," said Levin. "I would love one of those most of all."

"You might as well believe in the Easter Rabbit," said Ben.

"He always leaves me a ton of candy," said Levin.

6

The detectives found the office on the ground floor in the center of a lobby. Stairs led up from both sides of the room. Signs pointed to a gym, library, and cafeteria toward the rear of the building. A couple of teachers and someone with the attitude of an off duty cop watched them as they crossed the floor to the enclosed area.

"Hopefully someone here will remember the magic club," said Levin.

"If they have yearbooks, that will be okay too," said Ben. "I can build a suspect list from those with enough time."

"How's it going, guys?," said the off duty cop, walking out of the office to confront them before they got deeper into the school. "I'm Alec Niven, the security officer."

"Detectives Tennyson and Levin," said Ben. He showed his badge. "We're looking into some shared history between some accident victims. We were hoping that someone who worked here in eighty seven would still be on the job."

"I don't think any of the teachers have been here that long," said Niven. He frowned with his oblong face. "Maybe they know someone you can talk to since they retired. Come on. We'll ask Mrs. Garrity. She might know someone who was around back then."

"We'll also need copies of the yearbooks," said Levin. "We're trying to figure out if our victims had any enemies back then we can identify and talk to about what's going on now."

"Those will be easier," said Niven. "There are copies in the library, and I think the city keeps some in an archive somewhere. You might be able to get copies from the superintendent's office with a call."

"Excellent," said Levin.

"Mrs. Garrity," said Niven, facing the oldest woman at a desk in the office. She looked like a mushroom that had bloomed behind her desk and put on glasses. "Do you know anyone who worked here in eighty seven?"

"Miles," said the woman instantly. "He's been here forever. People told me he was working here as part of the student work plan when he was younger. I don't know where he is right now, but I can call him for you."

"Thank you," said Niven. "I have an office you can use off to one side there."

"Thanks," said Ben. "This shouldn't take too long. We just need a onceover to get us on track. If he actually knew the victims, that would be a plus."

"He usually circles the building, taking care of things from the top floor first," said Niven. "This time of day, he might be somewhere on the second floor, cleaning up after the kids."

It took some time, but an elderly man in green work clothes ambled in sight. He walked into the office with his keys jangling from a lanyard on his belt. Dark eyes took in the two detectives.

"Cheese it," he said. "It's the fuzz."

"Miles, this is Detectives Tennyson, and Levin," said the security officer. "This is Miles Johnson, our custodian. Miles, they want to ask about students from the eighties."

"That's a long time ago to be digging around now," said Miles. "How can I help you?"

"You guys can talk in private in my office," said Niven. "I don't think you want the rest of us overhearing this."

The three of them walked into the empty office. Niven had decorated it with his police academy plaque, photos of his kids, and a bust of a German Shepherd. Ben sat behind the desk and pulled out his phone so he could send everything to Old Reliable so it could work on checks to help refine the search it was already doing.

"We're interested in the magic club in eighty seven, eighty nine," said Ben. "Robert Houdin was a member then."

"The magic club?," said Johnson. "That ended quick after the talent show fiasco."

"There was a problem?," asked Levin. He leaned against a book shelf.

"Girl died during a trick," said Johnson. "Her brother blamed the other kids. I remember they told him that she wasn't supposed to have tried the escape. She wasn't good enough."

"Do you remember what the trick was?," asked Ben. This could be the motive. Why wait so long to get even?

"Sure," said Johnson. "It was one of those water tank escapes. You know, where the magician is tied up and thrown in a tank of water and he has to get out before he drowns."

"Do you remember the name of the girl?," asked Ben.

"Not off the top of my head," said Johnson. "She might be in the yearbook if they did something on the club. Her brother went to school here too. I don't remember his name off the top of my head. Heard he had been locked up a couple of years after the accident."

"Do you remember why?," asked Ben.

"Not off the top of my head," said Johnson. "I think he killed someone. I know that he blamed the club and the principal for what happened, but the guy he killed didn't have anything to do with that as far as I can remember."

"So it's possible he's been locked up all these years," said Ben. "That's something we can check from the station."

"Is any of this helpful?," asked Johnson.

"Yes," said Ben. "We have no leads, and no suspects. This could make or break our case if we can figure out how it all fits together."

"I'll take you down to the library and we can look through the books," said Johnson. "Maybe that will trigger my memory."

"That would be great," said Ben. "Mrs. Garrity says you worked here as a kid. How did that happen?"

"Back then, they had a work release program," said Johnson. He stood to leave. Levin opened the door and stepped out so he wouldn't block the way. "You could work for the school to get credit for classes. So I did that so I could make it to graduation. I used that to apply for the job here, and I've been here ever since."

"They don't do that now?," asked Ben.

"The system doesn't have the money for it," said Johnson. "The program shut down in the nineties when the city started cutting things for the budget."

"I get that," said Ben.

The three men went down to the library. Johnson led the way to a section of books. He pulled out four and put them on the top of their short shelf so he could leaf through the pages.

"I had more hair then," said Johnson. He showed them a picture of him with a big afro, and a smile. He held a key ring in one hand.

"This is the magic club," he said after a few minutes of searching. "This girl was the girl who died. Her name was Hacks. This is her brother. Marty and Sharon Hacks."

Ben made a note of the name and sent it over for his computer to focus on while they were digging around at the school.

"You said she drowned?," asked Levin.

"Yeah," said Johnson. "They rolled that tank out so she could climb into it and try to escape. She couldn't get the door open. Her brother always thought someone had tampered with the thing. Her parents sued the heck out of the school for not having anything to rescue her. I think they resorted to using a sledge hammer on the sides, but by the time they got through she had drowned. There was nothing the EMTs could do to revive her."

"Thanks, Mister Johnson," said Ben. "We might need you to swear out a statement if we have to go ahead."

"Can you tell me what's going on?," asked Johnson.

"A few days ago, Robert Houdin was killed by a rigged elevator in his building," said Ben. "After digging, we discovered all of the boys that were in the magic club had bizarre accidents and are also dead. The magic club is the only thing linking them together."

"And the only thing that stands out is the Hacks girl drowning," said Johnson. "That closed the magic club down. The school thought it was going to be some kind of sleight of hand, not a Houdini escape attempt."

"You said the brother killed someone and went away," asked Levin.

"What I heard was they found Marty Hacks at Principal Minestone's house," said the custodian. "The word was he had drowned the guy in his own bath tub."

"Revenge for his sister?," asked Levin.

"That's what I heard, and that's what everyone thought," said Johnson. "Marty didn't say a word in his own defense as far as I know. He might have been able to claim grief caused him to do it, but he never said anything."

"It's a long time to hold a grudge if he is still alive and moving around," said Ben. "We'll have to figure out how he fits in to this, or discard him as a suspect and look around for someone else."

"Thank you for your time," said Ben. "We're a long way away from getting this into court."

"We might not ever get into court the way this is shaping up," said Levin. "We were lucky to find something to do with the club."

"If it was Hacks, be careful," said Johnson. "He was devoted to his sister, and if he just got out, he's motivated not to get caught and go back so soon."

"The question is does he have anyone else he can go after before we can find him?," said Ben.

Johnson gave a thought to the matter. His eyes looked back through the years. He frowned.

"There was the guy who ran the talent show," said Johnson. "I don't know if he is still alive. I mean he was middle-aged when I was a kid."

"Do you remember his name?," asked Ben.

Johnson flipped through the yearbook. He nodded at the staff pictures, tapping the picture with a finger.

"Harlan Evers," said Johnson. "He was a French teacher. I think he taught history too."

"He ran the talent show?," asked Ben.

"And he had the final say on what got on stage, and what didn't," said Johnson. "I don't know if he is still alive, but he might be able to tell you more about the accident and the Hacks."

"So he could be dead wherever he wound up after all these years," said Ben. "We don't have anything to lose by looking for him."

"Good luck," said Johnson. "If you need anything else, come by."

"Thanks for the help," said Ben. "Wait. Do you know what happened to the water box after the fire department was done?"

"Not really," said Johnson. "I helped the old custodian, Mr. Keeves, load it on a truck. The guys who took it said they were from some insurance company representing the city."

"Thanks again," said Ben. He entered a search for any possible insurance company. "We'll let you know if this goes to court."

"Good luck," said Johnson.

7

Ben and Levin found the French teacher in a retirement home on the edge of the city. He sat in a wheel chair, hose running from his nose to a tank in a bag hanging from his chair. He regarded the two detectives as they stood at his apartment door.

"What can I do for you, Detectives?," asked Harlan Evers. Age had taken some of what had made him a dynamic teacher but not all of it.

"We're looking into an accident that happened at your school, Thunstone High," said Ben. "A girl died trying to do an escape."

"This is about the Hacks?," asked Evers. "I think about her every day. The boys told her not to try the escape. Her brother believed the tank had been tampered with to keep her in the water so she would drown."

"Had it?," asked Levin.

"I didn't think so," said Evers. He waved a hand as he took a breath. "The city had someone look at it, and they said Shay had died as an accident. Anyone else would have been able to unlock the lid from the inside."

"Shay?," said Ben.

"Everyone called Sharon Hacks Shay," said Evers. "It was her nickname."

"Do you know what happened to the water tank?," asked Ben. "I would like to try to figure out why she couldn't open it."

"I have no idea," said Evers. "I heard that the school insurance company had taken it for their investigation. I don't know where it went from there."

"Who would know?," asked Levin.

"I would have said the Principal, but he's dead," said Evers. "Marty Hacks drowned him in his own bath tub. Maybe someone in central administration. A lot of things had to be paid for by the city, so someone might have kept the receipts even this late in the game."

"All right," said Ben. "Why did you let her try this stunt?"

"She had shown she could do the trick before the show," said Evers. "Shay shouldn't have been in any danger. I don't know what went wrong during the act, but she had already proven she could get out of all the locks in record time."

"What do you mean?," asked Ben.

"There were a set of practice sessions," said Evers. "We timed her on each part of the escape. She could get out of the locks on the cuffs and the chains in seconds. She had the lung capacity to stay underwater for three, four, minutes. The hardest part was the top of tank, and she could unlock that in a minute flat with the lock pick she had."

"Miles Johnson told us Marty Hacks thought the tank was sabotaged in some way," said Levin.

"I did too," said Evers. "But it never came up, and the school and everyone said it was a terrible accident that could have happened to anyone in that situation."

"So you think someone futzed with the tank, but no one actually investigated to find out," said Ben.

"Yes," said Evers. "It looked like an accident, so it must have been an accident."

"All right," said Ben. "I don't know what we can do about that, but we still have to find Marty Hacks, so I would watch out since we think he did away with the magic club."

"If he kills me, it will be a blessing," said Evers. "I don't have long now and I will probably be dead before this even sees the inside of a court."

"Thank you for your time," said Ben. "You've been a big help."

"I don't see how," said Evers.

"A lot of our investigation has been around the death of Robert Houdin," said Ben. "This led to the magic club, and then to you. This earlier death might be the motive to prosecute Marty Hacks if we can find him. You might be one of the few witnesses that know anything about what happened to his sister."

"Shay had her whole life ahead of her," said Evers. "I never thought she would get killed over something she had practiced day after day."

"Just keep an eye out for anything that seems strange," said Ben. "Call us if you think of anything else."

He handed over his card. He doubted the old man would be any more helpful, but you never knew what came up through years of memories.

The detectives stepped out of the tiny apartment/imitation hospital room. They walked down the hall. Ben wrote down notes as they went.

"Why is he still alive?," asked Levin.

"He's alive but the principal isn't," said Ben. "He ran the show. You would think he would be the first to get the accidental murder treatment."

"Maybe Hacks knew for sure he didn't have anything to do with his sister's death," said Levin.

"We have to find him and question him," said Ben. "If he's smart, he'll stay mum about all of this. We don't really have anything on him even though we think he did it."

"If the sister's death is the motive, why did he start by killing the principal?," said Levin. "If we knew that, we could look at the rest of this and put it together for court."

"Let's go down to the courthouse and see if we can pull the record," said Ben. "Maybe there is something there we can use."

"Evidence vault?," asked Kevin.

"They would have thrown it away years ago," said Ben. "But maybe someone kept the pictures."

The city had a policy that if a case closed, and the trial was over, then evidence could be destroyed after so many years. The exceptions were open cases, and cases that had closed but the suspect had not received a trial.

Any evidence in Sharon Hacks' case would have been destroyed because it had been ruled an accident. The police department wouldn't keep anything for decades if it didn't see any reason for it.

"We can see if anyone has left pictures of anything related to our case," said Ben. "I doubt we will find anything."

"Call Gwen and see if the lab has anything," said Levin. "That will give us a headstart on our search while we're going through the trial transcripts at the courthouse."

"Good idea," said Ben. "Maybe someone had kept something from the Hacks case just out of curiosity."

Ben spent a few minutes talking to Gwen and seeing if she could run the search for him.

Levin shrugged. It was a slim hope. Decades made a difference both ways. New techniques allowed for old evidence to be looked at in better ways. On the other hand, time robbed that same evidence of value when it didn't point to anything usable.

Trial transcripts would be easier to get a hold of for them. A visit to the Records division should get them something. The main problem would be if the file was added to the automated recall, or some place they would have to go to get a copy of the original.

Levin expected the runaround because the age of everything.

They were dealing with thirty-forty years of history that the city might want to keep buried because the powers that were had decided the death was accidental. Two detectives wanting to look into something settled would stir up a lot of trouble.

Levin didn't mind that part. Stirring up things was the best way to figure out what was going on.

"I have so many questions," said Ben. "I have a feeling most of them won't be answered."

"Why did he go after the principal and not Evers?," asked Levin. "It kind of sticks out."

"Maybe the Principal changed the act somehow," said Ben. "He might have changed the tank at the last moment. If he did, that might have been enough to cause the girl's death."

"So we have Evers saying that Sharon Hacks had enough practice to open locks on chains underwater, and had enough lung capacity to open the tank," said Levin. "But she drowned trying to pull off the stunt and the only reason other than her messing up and maybe not being able to use the concealed lock pick she should have had was that maybe someone tampered with the tank. Since we don't have the tank, we have no way to know for sure."

"And our only suspect has no place to go to and is off the grid," said Ben. "So we can't bring him in and ask him why he killed those people.

"If he was smart, he wouldn't talk to us, and we would have to let him go to pick out his next victim," said Levin.

"Everybody is dead," said Ben. "Unless he learns how the tank was sabotaged and figures out who did it all these years later. He would have to have the tank so he could examine it for problems."

"We're talking about the Hacks girl being murdered by her own trick," said Levin. "Is that even possible?"

"What we have is a theory about motive," said Ben. "The main problem is like any cold case. Most of the evidence has been examined and discarded. We have to go back and rely on witnesses, and witnesses are unreliable."

"So the only way to nail things down is to find that tank and see if it's still sabotaged after all this time," said Levin.

"We would have to be so lucky, we should buy lottery tickets," said Ben. "Let's see what the clerks can tell us about Hacks's trial. Maybe there will be a mention of what happened to the tank, and who the insurance company was at the time."

"And we have Gwen digging through the old files," said Levin. "Maybe there is something there we can use."

"All right," said Ben. "We know enough about our suspect to think he did it. He had the motive and the means. We have no way of knowing if he had the opportunity since our only witness had no way of seeing his face. So our next step is to keep building our case and finding him so we can ask him where he was when we think these devices were tampered with. There's no way we'll get a warrant to search for a connection between any electronic equipment he might have and the elevator."

"We'll think of something," said Levin. "The biggest thing will be just tracking him down. He's out of prison. The closest thing he has to help is his family if he still has one."

"We'll add that on the things to do," said Ben.

They drove over to the archive for the county court system. They asked the clerk on duty if she had the transcripts for the Hacks trial and if they could get a copy. She asked for her machine to print out what it could, which she handed over so Ben could start reading it on the way out of the low building.

"Hacks went away for thirty years," said Ben. "The major crime was murder like we heard. The district attorney at the time had wanted the max for a murder one conviction. The defense argued it down to second degree. Most of the minor crimes associated with the murder were let go in the sentencing."

"Did he actually serve the whole term, or is he out on parole?," asked Levin.

"We can check with the prison board," said Ben. "Someone there must know what his status is."

"We'll be digging into this like we're headed for China," said Levin.

"It'll be fine," said Ben. "Once we check with the parole board, we can get an address for our Mister Hacks. If he isn't there, we can put an APB on him and see if one of our patrol cars comes across him."

"We still don't have anything to tie him to the murders," said Levin.

"We just want to know how he feels now they are all dead and he isn't," said Ben.

"Probably like it's best day of his life," said Levin. "These guys who might have killed my sister by accident are dead? Great. They deserved what they got."

"All right," said Ben. "That's an excellent point."

"So we hit the parole board next, then it is the end of the watch," said Levin. "What are we doing tomorrow?"

"It depends on if Hacks is somewhere we can pick him up to talk to him about what is going on," said Ben. "We can't arrest him for Houdin and his friends, but we can ask him what happened with his sister. Maybe he will tell us more about that."

"You think he will crack and open up about everything else if we go at it like that?," said Levin.

"No, but I want to know what he's like," said Ben. "I don't see how it hurts us if he knows we can't arrest him yet."

"And once he knows we're looking at him, maybe he will leave something we can tie back to the crime scenes," said Levin.

"We'll have to do some soft harrassment," said Ben.

"Some Columbo style," said Levin. "Excuse me, sir, have you seen my glass eye?"

"Once he complains, the game is over," said Ben. "Until then we have nothing to lose."

"We're going to have to tell Wei this is what we plan to do," said Levin. "Flowers is not going to like a whiff of us doing something crazy."

"You're right about that," said Ben. "We need to get an okay, find Hacks, and see what we can get out of him."

"Nobody ever expects the Columbo style," said Levin. He smiled. "Everyone is always looking for the Callahan."

"I think it's the only way we can get to the bottom of this," said Ben. "If we could use it as a trap so much the better."

"Let's see if we can find him before we put your crazy scheme in motion," said Levin. "He might have already skipped town now that he has taken out the last member of the club."

"If we could just convince him to go after someone else, that could be the trap we need to get him back into court, and back to jail," said Ben. "It would have to be about the water tank. How do we convince him we found it?"

"Maybe if we asked about that in particular," said Levin. "Maybe tell him we're looking for it."

Ben nodded as he considered the idea.

8

Marty Hacks had never reported to his parole officer. They had no way of knowing where he was, and what he was doing. Ben swallowed the bitterness as he tried to think of some way to find the guy.

"I found the tank," said Levin. He smiled at his partner's expression. "Talk about some luck."

"You have to be kidding me," said Ben. "How did you do that?"

"It wasn't easy," said Levin. "Some museum has it as a replica of one of Houdini's escapes."

"We need to have our guys look at it," said Ben. "We can't seize it. What do we do?"

"We go down with Dave and have him take pictures of it," said Levin. "Then we ask the questions like who replaced the glass and so forth. It should be a snap."

"We won't be able to use it as evidence except as motive," said Ben. "Maybe we can broadcast we found it, and that Hacks was wrong and killed the wrong people."

"We use it for bait?," said Levin. "Are you sure you want to do that?"

"We have a lot of circumstantial evidence that ties Hacks to the murders," said Ben. "We need something solid so the prosecutor can convict. Right now, I am envisioning the closing argument as Robert Houdin might have been murdered in this so-called accident. His friends might have been murdered too. The only one who could have done it is Hacks. You have to convict this dangerous man."

"So we add in the tank and its history to try to bolster our case," said Levin. "We can do that."

"I would feel a lot better if we had something that could tie Hacks to the scene, and denied any alibi he might have," said Ben. "Right now, we have nothing."

"Maybe his fingerprints will be on the tank after all these years," said Levin. "Then we can try to prove he killed his sister as justification to murder the others."

"That's crazy enough to be true," said Ben. "I don't think we have a chance to bring it to court. The crime is unprovable and would take a court order to convert it from an accident to a murder."

"Let's look at it," said Levin. "Then we can worry about how we're going to use it."

"Right," said Ben. He made sure his files were closed before grabbing his pistol from his work place and snapping it on his belt. Finding the tank had been a miracle. He should be happy with that.

They met Dave at the Clifford Museum and the three went inside. They found a guide and they explained what they wanted to do, and asked if the tank could be verified as the real thing. A dusting of fingerprints should show them who had touched it, but not when.

Dave applied a battery of tests, then photographed the tank to make sure that it was recorded for later in case something happened to it. The guide told them the tank had the walls replaced a few years after the acquisition. Everything else should be nearly the same as when it was last used.

"We need to have someone look at this," said Ben. "I don't think we can just take it. We need to see if the lock was messed with to keep Shay Hacks inside so she would drown."

"I guess we can ask if one of our techs can climb inside and take pictures," said Levin. "Do you really think that's what happened?"

"We need to know if her death was accidental, or murder," said Ben. "And we need to know about whom else she knew at the school that could have rigged the top other than the magic club."

"It's not like we're going to be able to ask them," said Levin. "You think Hacks killed them by mistake?"

"It's a possibility that needs to be trimmed off," said Ben. "We got the tank, we got a rep we can call to verify this is the same tank as the one in the school, we have an account of what happened. Most of our suspects are dead. The French teacher, the brother, and an unknown subject are our best choices for whatever happened. We need a way to question Hacks, and we need a way to prove everything after all these years."

Ben frowned at the tank.

"This is why I don't like cold cases," he said. "Dave, can you take the lock apart and see if it is rigged?"

"I can make a call," said the forensics tech. "There are a ton of fingerprints all over this thing. I doubt they will be much help."

"We need to know if there is a secret lock, or if the regular lock was tampered with in some way," said Ben. "The museum lady said this is the same top that came with the tank when they put the walls back together after what happened."

"I'll get the lock guy down here and see what he can do," said Dave. "The report and pictures will be sent to your desk in a couple of days depending on what he finds."

"I would love to haul this out of here," said Levin. "Maybe you're right and leaving it here is the best thing possible."

"We should use it for bait," said Ben. "Can you wait here with Dave? I am going to the lab and see if Gwen, or one of her guys, has a beacon we can plant on this thing. Is someone steals it, I want to be able to follow it wherever it goes. Worse case, I will figure out a way to hook a phone with a locator to it and we'll be able to follow that around when it starts moving."

"There's no way he would steal this thing," said Levin. He waved at the refurbished tank. "Why?"

"We're going to tell the news we found it and we feel that it will give us evidence to convict Hacks of killing his own sister," said Ben. "Then we see what happens."

"He will try to fix something to blow up around you like a microwave," said Levin.

"He thinks the magic club killed his sister," said Ben. "What if he was wrong?"

"Too bad we can't use a person as bait for this so we can lure him into a trap and let him have it," said Levin. He said that the most sarcastic way he could.

"I would love to use Flowers, but we have to work with what we got," said Ben. "I'm going to get that bug, and then when Dave gets done, we leak the news."

"Call Wei first," said Levin. "That way he will tell the Brass we are running a trap. Otherwise, they will tell the press how incompetent you are."

"Good point," said Ben. "I will be right back. I might need to talk to the guys in Narco and see if they have a bug we can use with all the money they take in for the city."

"All right," said Levin. "I didn't call all over the town looking for this thing to lose it to some psycho killing people with barbecue tongs."

"The fact that you found it was amazing, the fact that someone rebuilt it was even more amazing, the fact that we can use this to close our case is even better if we can convince Hacks to confess because he killed the wrong guys," said Ben.

"That can't be what this is about," said Levin.

"Doesn't matter," said Ben. "All that matters is can we convince him of that and force a confession because that's the only way this is going to get settled."

"Get the bug," said Levin. "Once we plant the story, either he takes the bait, or he doesn't. We won't know until he shows up."

"This was a good piece of work," said Ben. "Good job."

He turned and walked out of the museum. He had to get across town to the lab, and call the Narco boys. He figured he could put together a better bug in a few minutes but he needed to use police issue in case this ever made it to court.

The last thing he could do was go to court with a homemade tracking device that could light up the city. Rook would be all over his case about the new technology and how he was spreading it around.

He could get to the lab faster without dragging Levin around behind him. So splitting up would save them some time.

If the trap worked, they might be able to put Shay Hacks's death on someone after all this time. He didn't know how he was going to do that. He didn't have any viable suspects thanks to Marty Hacks killing everyone involved except for the one guy who should have been killed since he was the one with the most direct approval.

Ben thought about that for the few seconds it took him to cross the city to the station and the lab at the base of the building. He went in through a side door so he could talk things over with Gwen and get the equipment he needed. Then he could head up to Wei's office and ask for a small leak to be thrown out to the news.

What would Hacks do if a leak came out that he killed the wrong people? Would he feel guilty? Would he go back and retrace his steps for a new victim? Would he go after the French teacher and arrange an accident?

Was he already planning to kill the last guy? Was he just waiting for the right time?

"Hello, Ben," said Gwen. She put down a report she was reading at her desk. She put her hands in her labcoat pockets. "Isn't Dave helping you?"

"Kevin and I want to set up a tracking device on an old water tank that might be stolen in the next few days," said Ben. "I was wondering if you had one, or if I had to go upstairs to Narco and see if they had one."

"I think we have sets of them," said Gwen. She started out of her office. She waved for him to follow. "What's going on?"

"Kevin found the old water tank that Shay Hacks died in," said Ben. They walked down to the Electronics lab. "We want to see if someone steals it after we put out a leak."

"And that's why Dave is out there?," asked Gwen. She went to the cabinets and sorted devices and batteries for the trap.

"We don't really expect any usable prints, but he said he could get us a lock guy to look at the mechanism," said Ben. He stood in the door. "There is a small chance her brother was right and someone jammed the mechanism so she couldn't pick the lock and escape the tank. It might have been one of our victims. The one guy we talked to said that she could pick every lock they had set up for the escape. She should have been able to get out in no time at all."

"So you broadcast that you found the thing and hope he tries to take it?," said Gwen.

"We don't have anything else except to sit on the one survivor and hope our guy decides to turn his house into a death trap so we can catch him in the act," said Ben. "We can't wait on him. We have to force the move and try to snag him before he kills someone else."

"Flowers would try to review board you if you let someone die by mistake," said Gwen. She checked batteries and fitted out two beacons that could be placed on the tank.

"Exactly," said Ben.

"Find two places to set these," said Gwen. "Hopefully he will see the one and not look for the other. Set them and push the button. The signal will call back to a scanner I will get for you. That will give you direction of travel."

"Sounds good," said Ben. "Now I have to talk to the Captain and see what he thinks of this stupid scheme."

9

It took some work, but a guy from the press department, Flowers, Wei, and someone from the Cold Case squad that Ben and Levin didn't know went over the release. This had to be broadcast on the news and carried across the city. Parts of the case were laid out so the release could be convincing without giving away too much.

The main fact was the belief that they wanted to talk to Hacks about the deaths and the fact that he could have been wrong about what had happened to his sister. He might have been wrong about everything.

The Cold Case detective, Wiley, was close to retirement. He had closed dozens of cases, and had a high conviction rate. He sat down in their conference room and raised his eyes at the boards on the walls.

"I dug up the post mortem for Sharon Hacks," said Wiley. He handed the file over as he sat down in a visitor's chair and looked around. "I remembered the case when Flowers called down to ask for someone to go over the facts outside of your squad."

"Thanks," said Ben. He flipped through the pages. He knew the brain booster would give back everything when he turned it on.

"We never found anyone to admit to being the father," said Wiley.

"Excuse me," said Levin. He took the file and started reading it a lot slower than Ben.

"The Hacks girl was pregnant," said Wiley. "We combed through the school looking for the father to ask him questions. We thought it might be one of the teachers. When we started asking about her principal, that was when Marty Hacks drowned him in his bath tub. So we never resolved that."

"What do you think?," asked Ben. He leaned back in his chair.

"I don't think the guy was close enough to any of his students to knock one up," said Wiley. "I checked everything I could. A lot is in the old case files, but the case was closed on the girl since it was ruled as an accident. It was just used as a motive for Hacks to kill the guy."

"The unknown father is suddenly the prime suspect in killing the girl," said Ben. "We have to make sure the lid was tampered with as much as we can."

"All this over what could be an accident?," asked Levin. He put the report down on the conference table.

"Maybe," said Wiley. "If the girl's drowning was an accident."

"This new information really changes nothing," said Ben. "We could maybe make a case to try to get the coroner to switch Shay Hacks's death to murder but that will be a hard row to hoe with what we have. After all this time, we would need to find the father and beat a confession out of him. As soon as we do that, any case we constructed would be out the window. We don't have any DNA from the fetus, do we?"

"No," said Wiley. "An accident? Something like that would have been considered too expensive to worry about back then. Cold Case is still waiting on DNA traces from murders a decade ago. An accident wouldn't even rate for anyone to keep anything back then."

"We could try for an exhumation order, but I don't know if they would have buried the fetus with her mother," said Ben.

"Let's shelve that for a moment," said Wiley. "We need for Marty Hacks to come in, or be tipped off where he is. What is the strategy when you have him in the box?"

"We can't close this on what we have," said Ben. "Everything is circumstantial and could be dismissed by a good defense. We can't even place him at the scene of the one murder we are sure happened."

"We need him to confess to the crime," said Levin. "That's the only way we can put him away. The four other murders have already been ruled as accidents and there's almost no evidence to say otherwise. If I didn't know what I was looking at, I would have said they were bizarre accidents."

"We need him to go after someone we can protect so we can catch him in the act," said Ben. "The only target we can put up is the unknown father of the baby, but that might not be right. It could have been anyone in the school who hated Shay Hacks enough to use the magic show to kill her."

"Or it could have been an accident," said Wiley. "I'm not saying an accident accident. I'm saying that the tank could have been sabotaged by any rival to make her look bad, but it went too far."

"We have no way of finding that out now," said Levin. "All of these people are scattered to the wind by now, the ones that aren't are dead."

"We should see what happens to the tank," said Ben. "Maybe Hacks will go for it. It's a long shot, but it's all we got."

"Cold cases come down to the sliver of what we can prove," said Wiley. "My experience has been some of these cases can never be solved because the passage of time is too far. This might be one of them."

"If we can track him down, we can ask him for answers to our questions," said Ben. "Maybe he can tell us something about everything else connected to this case."

"Good luck," said Wiley. "I would like to know what really happened to the girl."

He stood and picked up the file. He headed for the office door. He still had dozens of cases he was reviewing down in the basement. Some of them would never be cleared. Some of them would be because someone came forward, or a new technique took apart the evidence and gave him another lead.

You should never give up.

Ben looked at the white boards. He got up and wrote down that Shay Hacks was pregnant. He wrote down father and a question mark. He stared at the new information.

He rubbed his face as he thought about the rest of their plan. If Hacks didn't go after the tank, how could they get him? He needed something like the Machine to give him city wide information from public cameras up to the minute.

"We need to keep an eye on the tank," said Ben. "If Hacks doesn't take the tank, we might be at an impasse."

"Do you think he killed the principal because he thought the man had sabotaged the tank?," said Levin.

"He might have thought he had found his sister's lover," said Ben. He wrote that down to the side with his marker. "It makes sense. Wiley is in the middle of his investigation and zeroes on the principal. The school finds out, and Hacks does the deed that put him away years ago."

"But Wiley didn't know if the principal could have done it, and the murder shut everything down," said Levin.

"Hacks goes to jail, and then gets out and takes his revenge on the magic club," said Ben. "Why the magic club other than he blamed them for what happened to Shay? Everything hangs together, but we can't prove anything because of the way he committed his crimes."

"Maybe we can get him for something other than murder," said Levin.

"We should check with the lab and see if they found anything in the tank lid," said Ben. "That might change everything, one way or the other."

"I don't have anything else to do," said Levin. "Do you think he will take the bait?"

"I hope so," said Ben. "I doubt we will be able to get a confession, but it would be nice."

The partners went downstairs to the labs. Ben thought about things, trying to fit them into a useful line of investigation. He thought that the French teacher would be more of a suspect for the unnamed father than the principal. He was right there with the club. He could have been too close to the girl and been the father.

Why had Hacks gone right for the principal?

Wiley had ruled him out in a few days of investigation. Who else had known something was up? Who else had been able to point the brother at his victim with that much assurance?

He hoped to close his more recent case without having to depend on the older crime. There was no way they were going to convert it from an accident to a murder unless they came up with something extraordinary. And that meant nothing to proving Hacks had set up his spree of murders as accidents that killed his targets.

They found Gwen looking at something in a microscope. She had an expert in keys with her. They were talking possibilities and how to write up their report for whatever case they were working on at the moment.

Gwen nodded at the labeling the guy gave her. She nodded at the detectives and gestured for them to come closer.

"I want you guys to look at this and tell me what you think," she said. She gestured at the microscope.

Levin went first. He frowned at what was under the microscope. He stepped back. Ben looked through the eyepiece. A piece of crooked metal had been pinned to the examining tray under the lenses.

"It looks like a key," said Ben. He stepped back from the microscope.

"That's what it is," said the key man. "Monte Saiton. I check most of the locks brought in for tampering. This key was in the lid of the tank you found. I called and the owner said the lid had been with the tank forever. They had always wondered why it didn't work right, and now we know."

"We do?," said Levin.

"Yes," said Gwen. "This key doesn't belong in the lid's lock. Someone jammed it in there to keep a real key from being put in. That's why they had to punch a hole in the original tank. No one could get the lid open and off the top."

"So Shay Hacks's accident is a murder," said Ben.

"Just based on this, maybe," said Gwen. "But it would take a miracle for you to prove anything like that."

"It explains why Hacks went on a rampage," said Ben. "I don't know anything we can do for her except put out a news story and ask the public for help."

"What are you guys going to do now?," asked Gwen.

"We have to sit on the tank," said Ben. "Copy the report and we'll send it over to Wei. I doubt he will do anything unless we can figure out who sabotaged the tank."

"Too bad you can't ask anyone who had access to it while it was waiting to be pushed on stage," said Gwen.

"We can ask the sponsor," said Ben. "He'll know who helped move it around before the accident."

"We already checked for prints and there was nothing," said Gwen. "So all we have is this fragment of a key in a lock from years ago that no one found, and no one touched until we did and documented for the case."

"I'll call Evers and ask him if he remembers anyone who touched the case," said Ben. "He might not know after all these years."

"We can put the key in a second leak," said Levin. "Maybe it will stir the pot and we'll get an idea on who killed the girl."

"Maybe one of her classmates will come forward with something that will help us crack everything," said Ben.

"If we solve this, it will make Wiley happy," said Levin.

"I know," said Ben. "Let's see how our trap looks. He might not fall for it. We might have to think of something else if we don't get a bite."

"Our luck, a patrol will shoot him on the street and all of this will be for nothing," said Levin.

"I hope not," said Ben.

10

Ben and Levin had their doubts that their trap would work. Who would care about an old tank in a museum? They were counting on Marty Hacks being obsessive about his sister's death. If he tried to steal the tank, that would be enough to charge him and hold him until they could figure out how they were going to present the Houdin murder.

They would definitely need to prove that he had the mechanical ability to hack an elevator and send it up and down at his command. Once they had that in the bag, maybe they could show he had a deep hatred of the five men who used to be in the club with his sister.

If he knew that his sister had been pregnant at the time, that would put some light on things.

If he didn't know, then he had killed the five men of the club just on the belief they had caused his sister to drown.

Ben didn't think any of the magic club had anything to do with the death of Shay Hacks. Someone else had sabotaged her tank. Marty killing the principal had caused the truth to be buried for the decades he was in prison.

"What do you think?," asked Levin.

"If he comes after the tank, then we are dealing with an obsessive that won't stop unless we stop him," said Ben. "And we might have to shoot him to put a stop to this. I'm surprised that he hasn't gone after Elders at this point. I expected the man to suffer some problem with his oxygen tank well before now."

"I know what you mean," said Levin. "Do you think any of the club stuck that key in the lock?"

"No," said Ben. "I think it was done by someone not directly involved in the act. The club had too much invested in their talent show. Elders had a lot riding on it as the sponsor to the show. Who knew what the principal thought? I doubt Shay Hacks getting killed was on his mind until it happened and he was being checked out for statutory rape. I think Wiley would have kept digging if the Brass hadn't shut him down and told him to write it off as an accident."

"Flowers is not going to let us reopen it and spend money investigating," said Levin. "I'm surprised he sprang for the command center to watch the tank."

"I don't need his permission," said Ben. "All I need is for the coroner to reverse himself in the light of new evidence. Then that will get us a way to reopen the files and requestion everyone until we figure out what really happened. I'll ask Wei to ask Hampton to give us some of his Cold Case guys to help us with the fact finding."

"Flowers will lose his mind over that," said Levin. He thought about the man hours and budget considerations for the overtime. "I would love to see how you can get the coroner to declare the Hacks girl a murder just out of academic interest."

"We have the tank lid, we have the broken key in the tank lid, we have reports certifying no one checked to see if the lock could be moved from the inside," said Ben. "We have Elders's initial statement that the victim could pick the lock with speed and had practiced on it. We don't have the investigation notes from the detectives on the job to show us what they did. And the reports don't really tell us anything now without having Wiley and whomever else involved walking us through the scene."

"Flowers still won't like it unless we can bring someone in and get the department some glory," said Levin. "He is all about avoiding bad publicity."

"We can't worry about him," said Ben. "We have to worry about if this trap will work, and if we can move on to a next step which will put Hacks behind bars while we try to figure out if he has anything that will show that he killed Houdin. The others will also have to be reexamined by the powers that be, but this is the only one we know for sure is a murder. If we can get him on this one, then the rest will have to remain strange accidents."

"You want him for the others we can't prove," said Levin. He knew his partner. Beating a murderer before they went into court to be tried was what he liked most of all.

"I want him to know that we'll keep digging until we find something," said Tennyson. "He might have killed five people over a case of mistaken intentions. What would he had done if he knew for sure what was going on? How many others would he have gone after to get his own brand of justice? If we can't stop him, we might have accident murders for everyone who just talked to him the wrong way."

"If we catch him, we can violate him over his parole," said Levin. "We can put the rest together while he is trying to get out of that."

"He has to come for this tank to show he knew it was sabotage," said Ben. "He has to be able justify everything somehow. If he doesn't come for it, we'll have to think of something else. I don't think I have another handle to use."

"We have movement near the emergency exit on the back of the museum," said Boone. "I see a panel truck in the alley. I can't read the plate."

"Everyone," said Dorman. "We need to let him come out with the tank so we can take him in the middle of committing a crime. Once we have that, we can move in and take him down."

The squad had set up around the museum, and armed themselves with radios to talk to one another. The command center wearing a plumber's van disguise was parked down the street and out of the way. Remote cameras had been set up so the monitors in the van could see the access points to the building. Ben and Levin held the front right corner. They could see the foyer, part of the main hall, and the gift shop through the front windows. Boone and his partner, Crockett, had set up on a roof in the rear of the building. Four other detectives had set up to keep watch on the building.

The rest of the squad would switch up and take over in the daytime if they had to keep watch more than a day.

"All right," said Boone. "He is opening the door. No one is supposed to be moving things, right?"

"The place is supposed to be shutdown," said Dorman. "Get ready to meet him when he comes out."

"We're heading down to the ground right now," said Boone.

"We should go," said Ben. "I doubt he is coming out the front unless he sees Boone and Crockett at the back door."

"I'm with you there," said Levin. "I'll be glad to go back to shootings where no one wants to talk to us after this."

Levin led the way down from their perch, using a fire escape. That was the main reason they had set up on the building. They needed a way to get down to the street fast. A fire escape was that way.

"Go left," said Ben. He pointed at the alley next to the museum. "I'll go right."

The partners split up, Levin calling ahead so Boone knew what was going on. Ben crossed the front of the museum. He didn't see any movement. He wasn't surprised. The tank exhibit was towards the back of the place.

Ben ran down the side of the museum. He held his watch in reserve in case Hacks tried to fight his way clear. The boosters were a trump card, but he didn't want to have the charge run out while in the middle of a takedown.

If Hacks turned out to be more physical than what they thought, then he would ask for extra strength or speed to deal with it. It wouldn't be the first time he had tackled a murderer resisting arrest.

Once they had their suspect locked down, they could go over how he was living off the grid, and what they had to do to shore up their case. If they found the device used to alter the elevator with the program on it, that would be a step in the right direction.

If they found equipment tying Hacks to the other suspicious deaths, that would be better. Then they could go into court with the hope of proving he killed five guys over the death of his sister.

A confession and deal would be the best outcome for everyone involved, but Ben doubted that would happen.

Ben reached the back of the museum. He spotted Boone and Levin on the other side of a truck dock door. He saw they had armed themselves in case Hacks needed to be shot. Crockett was moving up from the side of the building the partners had used for their lookout. The slim detective used the truck for cover in case a shooting had to happen.

Ben didn't pull his pistol. He leaned against the wall and waited with his hand on his watch. If things turned violent, he would activate the speed boost and beat his enemy into the ground. Then he would step back and act as if he had done nothing special.

Then he would load their murderer into a car and take him downtown.

The truck door opened. Everyone tensed. They found a man in a hoodie and jeans pushing the truck door up so he could push a glass cube on wheels out in the alley. He froze when he saw the weapons pointed his way.

"If you move," said Levin. "So help me God, I will put a box of bullets up in you like a turducken. Do you understand?"

"I got it, copper," said the man in the hoodie. He raised his hands. "Do what you got to do."

Something dropped from his hand. It hit the ground and created a flash and cloud of smoke. Levin almost pulled the trigger without a target out of reflex.

Ben touched his watch. Everything slowed down as he sped up. The green flash would be drowned by the special effect Hacks used. He streaked through the cloud and tackled the convict before he took three steps into the museum and the display space he could use to evade the police.

"Martin Hacks," said Ben. "You are under arrest for violating your parole. The break-in will be a separate charge. And we have some questions for you. I am going to read you your rights and then we're taking you in."

Ben took some handcuffs from a holder on his belt as he pressed the thief down. He knelt on one arm to put the cuff on, then he struggled to put the other cuff on the other wrist.

Levin and Boone came in. Their bulk made it easy to put the other manacle around the intended wrist. They hauled him to his feet, knocking the hood off Hacks's head. His face had a tattooed skull over his features.

Ben read a Miranda card to make sure Hacks knew his rights before he let Levin take their prize away. There would be paperwork involved in this but they had caught their man.

Could they make him confess so they didn't have to go to trial? That was a whole other row to hoe. What they had pieced together was so circumstantial, the D.A. would have to be desperate to use it. They needed a confession and a deal to close their case down and put everything in the archive for future detectives down the road.

Ben shrugged as the speed boost wore off. He had to let the watch recharge while he considered their next move. He doubted that he could force Hacks to say anything.

Maybe he could trade something. He thought about that. He could maybe do that if he was sure Hacks would stay in jail. Telling him he had missed his main target would just make him want to kill that target more. On the other hand, they couldn't hold him for murder, a defense lawyer would eat them alive over that.

He needed to take the time to prepare. He doubted the Brass would like him to do anything that looked like it would put an unknown civilian in danger. On the other hand, he didn't have much use for murderers who had escaped justice for decades.

If he could make the trade, he could put Houdin to sleep and maybe let someone else live in fear for the rest of their lives.

He certainly wasn't going to be able to arrest Shay Hacks's killer after all this time. That didn't mean he wouldn't try.

11

Ben turned on his brain booster in the conference room. Every fact gathered about the case was arranged in order along a systemic tree. Hacks's signature and how he murdered his victims were their own branches. He saw how Shay Hacks's murder had been done, and who must have done it from what Levin had learned from Evers. He even saw the murderer still had the key piece of evidence on his person. Probably thought no one would figure it out what it meant after all this time.

He wrote the name down on a calling card and put it in his jacket pocket. He didn't want it slipping out of mind when the booster wore off.

The assistant district attorney was going in with Hacks and his lawyer to broker a deal over the Houdin murder if they could. This one piece of information might be enough to get the man to sign away his freedom. His public defender would not like it.

Ben wanted to close his case. This was the only way that he saw. He doubted any prosecutor could stand up in front of a judge and jury and lay out this type of murder in a convincing way. A plea and a confession was the surest way to win at this point.

The main problem was having the coroner's office reverse their earlier ruling to have Shay Hacks's death declared a murder, or at least suspicious. If they could do that, then they had grounds to swear out a warrant to get the other part of the key, and arrest her murderer.

And Ben wanted to do that just as much as he wanted to make sure Hacks didn't hurt anybody else.

He let the brain boost fade as he turned from the conspiracy board with the Houdin murder. He needed to meet with the D.A. and Hacks in the interrogation room. He looked at his open cases on display. He would close them too.

He stepped out of the conference room and walked down the hall to where the block of rooms had been set up for questioning people. Levin and a balding man in a good suit talked outside the door for number four.

"This is D.A. Muskowitz," said Levin. "He's the one who will be signing off on any deal you can get Hacks to agree to do."

"Detective Levin said you don't have much of a case," said Muskowitz. He ran his hand through the rest of his hair. Thin glasses changed color when he looked around.

"We want Hacks to take a plea," said Ben. "A search warrant got us his hacker stuff and that still had Houdin's elevator codes on it. OTIS gave us an expert to show how the elevator was hacked and then dropped on the victim. I don't think you can get the other four murders reversed to charge him with since they have already been ruled as accidents."

"And any evidence was scattered by the fire department," said Levin.

"We also need his sister's death reversed from an accident to a murder," said Ben. "Then we're going to have to ask the murderer to come in and answer some questions after we serve a warrant for the weapon he used."

"Wait," said Levin. "You know who did it?"

"Yes," said Ben. "Wiley would have figured it out if the coroner hadn't ruled it an accident and the tank was shipped off before the evidence people then could go over it. Hacks killing his principal threw everything under the bus."

"Give me the cliff notes to bring me up to speed and how we want to go about this," said Muskowitz. "I'll go over the case file if Hacks won't sign a deal with us."

"Marty Hacks's sister was killed in a murder that looked like an accident during a school talent show in the eighties," said Ben. "While the investigation was ongoing, Hacks killed his principal. He was tried and convicted and then won parole. His sister was in a magic club and had been killed trying to pull off a Houdini type escape from a water tank. We think Hacks killed all the members of the magic club with murders that looked like accidents but the only one we're sure about is Robert Houdin. Kevin found the refurbished water tank at the museum and we had evidence people go over it. They found that the lock had been damaged so the lid could not be opened from the inside. We used that to bait Hacks out and are holding him on violating his parole and trying to steal the tank. We want him to admit to the Houdin murder at least even if he only agrees to some lesser charge so we can close it."

"And the parole violation puts him back in for the original crime for the remainder of his sentence whether he signs the deal, or not," said Muskowitz. "His lawyer is probably going to want to have some of that reduced off."

"I don't care as long as we can shut down the Houdin murder and move on to other things," said Ben. "I would like Shay Hacks's accident ruling reversed so I can pursue it myself, or hand it off to the Cold Case Squad, but I don't want to let the murderer there keep thinking that he got away with it."

"All right," said Muskowitz. "Let's go in and talk to our defendant and see what his lawyer will let him agree to before we think about anything else."

Levin knocked before opening the door. He didn't want to catch them in a talk that could be used to have evidence thrown out of court. They stepped inside the small room.

Hacks wore manacles and a jail jumpsuit. His hair had grayed in prison and the eyes glared more as he looked at the detectives and prosecutor.

His lawyer was a tiny woman in a suit with a black wedding ring and frizzy hair pulled back in a pony tail cascade. She put on her placid mask so she could negotiate charges.

Her client was going back to prison. She couldn't stop that. It was her job to maximize the minimal requirements and get him a better outlook.

"Hello, Jamie, Mister Hacks," said Muskowitz. "I'm Muskowitz, Mister Hacks. The detectives want you to make a plea deal for killing Robert Houdin. I'm willing to do that, and ask a judge to sign off on it. You're already facing life for violating parole. I don't see how I can make it harder for you putting you through a trial when that time is just going to be added to the sentence already imposed."

"We would like a plea to a lesser charge like assault with a deadly weapon, or manslaughter," said Jamie. "We don't want another murder two charge and more than five years behind bars. And we want the sentence to run concurrently."

"He violated his parole," said Muskowitz. "He is already facing thirty years. A parole for a lesser charge won't even come up before his other sentence is done. He serves the full sentence for whatever charge we agree to, and the burglary, consecutively."

"What if I don't want to sign a deal and take my chances in court?," asked Hacks. His voice conveyed disinterest in the wheels of justice that were threatening the rest of his life.

"Then you'll never know what happened to your sister," said Ben. "You already killed all the wrong people. The real murderer got to live without fear of consequences all these years thanks to you killing the principal like a moron."

"Who are you to talk to me like that?," said Hacks. "My sister was everything to me."

"Then you should have put more thought into things," said Ben. "Take a deal, whatever deal the lawyers can hammer out. Plead out. As soon as I make the arrest and send your sister's killer into the system, I will personally write you an outline of the events so you know everything. Otherwise, it might be years before you know anything."

"When will I know?," said Hacks.

"I have to have the coroner's ruling reversed and file for a warrant," said Ben. "You will still be going through the arraignment process while I am doing that. Then I have to make the arrest and bring the killer in. Then the D.A. and his lawyer will start with what you are going through here, and then a trial if a deal isn't made. As soon as the trial starts, I will send the case outline to whatever prison you wind up in."

"I don't trust you," said Hacks.

"It's this, or nothing," said Ben. "You've already killed six people that had nothing to do with your sister's death. How many more are you willing to kill for nothing."

"Everyone," said Hacks. "I will take the deal. Get the paperwork together."

"All right," said Muskowitz. "I will file a brief with Judge Carrol, and work everything out on my end. I will ask for the minimum time required and send it over for you to read."

"Are you sure you want to do this, Marty?," asked Jamie. She touched his arm.

"I want to know," said Hacks.

"Everything will be in the outline," said Ben. "I don't know if the D.A. can successfully prosecute the case after all this time, but win or lose, you will get the paperwork."

"Is there anything else we need to talk about before I get the ball rolling," said Muskowitz.

"I'm good," said Hacks.

"I'll be waiting on the paperwork," said Jamie.

"Carrol runs a rocket docket," said Muskowitz. "Everything should be ready to go in the next few days. We'll be waiting on a sentence the end of the month the way he moves."

"All right," said Jamie. "I would like to talk to my client before he has to go back to his cell."

"I have to talk to the detectives about this other case and see what I can do about that," said Muskowitz. "I will send over the paperwork and see you in court."

Jamie nodded.

Detectives and lawyer left the room. Ben closed the door softly.

"I will go and file a court order so you can get started on the arrest you want to do," said Muskowitz. "Do you really have a valid suspect?"

"Yes," said Ben. "He's still carrying the other half of the murder weapon on him. We just have to get a warrant to seize it without letting him know beforehand so he can't dump it, and then compare it to the half we have. The hard part will be convincing a jury that he did it."

"All right," said Muskowitz. "I'm going to need a briefing before we go to court."

"I think he killed her because she was pregnant and she didn't want to get rid of the baby," said Ben. "That would have wrecked everything for him then. When he saw the tank, and heard about what was planned. He took one of his keys and jammed the lock so she would drown. Then all he had to do was get rid of the tank. He didn't know Kevin Levin would come along thirty years later and scrounge that tank lid up to ruin his day."

"I'll call the office and get a warrant going to be signed by a sitting magistrate," said Muskowitz. "Do you have a name, or will it be a John Doe?"

"The name is Miles Johnson, and we're looking for his keys and keyring," said Ben.