The Magician Murders (The Art of Murder 3)

Sam was silent again. Then he said in normal tones, “I’m going to have a shower.”

“Okay.”

Sam hesitated. Said lightly, “Want to join me?”

Jason appreciated the message behind the invitation. He smiled faintly. “Rain check. I think I should give Dreyfus a call.”

“Right.” Sam smiled too. There was a hint of sympathy in his eyes, but for Sam this situation was black and white, no shades of gray possible. “When I come out, you can explain to me why you think there’s a serial killer stalking the magic community of Cheyenne.”

Jason’s lip curled. “Don’t tell me you haven’t already heard from SAC Reynolds about that possibility.”

“I want to hear it from you.”

“It’s instinct and guesswork there too.”

“But see, I trust your instincts,” Sam said.

Yeah. Well.

Sam disappeared into the bathroom. Jason sat on the bed and turned on his laptop, listening absently to the sound of the running shower as he checked his email.

There was a brief message from Shane Donovan in NorCal saying that he had spoken to Ursula Martin and she had informed him she had reached an out-of-court settlement with Fletcher-Durrand.

“Goddamn it,” Jason muttered. Not that it was really a surprise. It was a disappointment, though. With Martin’s defection, their case was now officially dead and buried.

On the bright side, this eliminated any motive anyone associated with Fletcher-Durrand had to get rid of him.

Speaking of which, he spotted an email from Jonnie with an attachment.

Jason opened the email.

Hi Jason,

Hope you’re feeling better. Sam asked me to forward these photos of Dr. Jeremy Kyser attending the Toronto conference on forensic psychology.

Not the best quality, but the man in the photos does resemble the man on Kyser’s book jackets and photo ID. Let me know what you think.

J.

Jason clicked on the first attachment, which turned out to be a photo of people attending some kind of banquet. They looked as thrilled as people always did when facing an evening of long-winded speeches and hotel conference food.

At first, he couldn’t even find Kyser in the mass of scholarly faces. Finally, he located him at a table in the back. Not a great photo, as Jonnie had said, but at that distance the man did appear to be Jeremy Kyser. It had been nearly a year since Jason had seen Kyser—and he’d only seen him the one time and for no more than a few minutes—so yeah, he thought that was Kyser.

He wouldn’t want to stake his life on it.

He clicked on the next photo. This shot was a formal group picture, and everyone’s head was about the size of the hole left by a paper punch. There were at least three wild-haired, fever-eyed, intense-looking mad scientist guys in that photograph that could have been Kyser. Jason couldn’t have sworn to any of them.

Nor could he swear they weren’t Kyser.

He heard the taps squeak in the bathroom, the sound of running water turning off. He heard the pop of the glass door.

He clicked on the third and final attachment.

This was a candid shot taken in a hallway. The photo had been snapped at a much closer range. There were several people wearing name badges, milling aimlessly around a hallway as people were prone to do between conference sessions. They carried cups of coffee, pastries, laptops, business-card cases, notepads, and chargers—and all wore the vaguely uncomfortable look of people silently practicing their “elevator pitches”—all but one.

Kyser was nearest the conference-room door, and he was greeting two colleagues with a smile that was best described as frantic. Jason frowned at that manic grin and popping eyes.

Overall…the guy looked right, looked as Jason remembered. Tall and rawboned, a frizzy mass of salt-and-pepper hair framing a bony, gaunt face. He couldn’t see the subject’s eye color, but his eyes seemed to be dark, so that was right. It all seemed right, seemed to line up with what he recalled of that one brief encounter.