The Murder Artist

CHAPTER 47

A family outing. Harper’s Ferry. The Potomac River. Liz and I and the boys float along on rented black inner tubes, drifting in the current toward the pickup point. The sky above the leafy branches, ballpoint blue. The water is warm and just deep enough that we don’t scrape on the rocks. The boys paddle to try to make themselves go faster, but strapped into their life jackets, in the huge inner tubes, they can hardly reach the water.

“What if there are fish?” Sean asks.

“Yeah, what if one bites my butt?” Kevin concurs.

“I don’t think there are any carnivorous fish in the Potomac River,” Liz says.

“What’s ‘carnivous’?”

“Carnivorous. It means meat-eating.”

“I’m not meat,” Sean protests. “Ewww. That’s gross.”

“I’m not so sure about the fish here,” I tell Liz. “I heard they lost a man down by the pickup point.”

“Daaaaaad!”

We’re not alone. A couple floats just ahead of us. A pod of teenagers cruises behind. They keep pushing each other out of the tubes, screaming and hooting. This doesn’t bother me – they’re just having fun – but when I hear the peremptory beep of someone’s cell phone, I’m irritated.

“Can you believe that?” I ask Liz. “There’s no sanctuary from the things.”

“They’ll be making them waterproof next,” Liz says, adjusting her sunglasses.

The sound keeps up and I’m about to shout to the teenagers that at least they could answer the damn thing, when-

It’s my watch.

I wake up, all at once and with a gasp. It’s still dark, and so foggy I can’t see any farther than a few feet. I drink the last of my water, fumbling at the cap with frozen fingers. I feel as if I’m a hundred years old; every part of my body hurts. I wait for my eyes to adjust. I try to stretch out.

Half an hour later, the sky begins to brighten. Behind the platform, on the opposite side of the rock, is a small ledge, almost a niche. It’s eighteen inches deep, I’d guess, but the rock face hangs over it. The only way I could fit into the space would be to crouch. I reject it.

I climb the spire, looking for a place to hide. I find one without too much trouble, fifteen feet above the platform, a spot I can wedge into, where I don’t have to balance or support my own weight. I can see the platform and the cables, the center of the chasm. But no one can see me.

I look at my watch every few minutes. After an hour passes, I’m worried. The cold is getting to me. I bite down on the fleece to keep my teeth from chattering.

And then, at last, I hear them, although thanks to the continuous thud of surf, not until they’re almost in the theater. I hear the scrape and click of shoes on rock. I hear the voices of two men – no, three – one speaking in an odd cadence that suggests a foreign language. And then – tears crash into my eyes – interspersed between the low voices of the men, I hear the high, sweet voices of children.

Sean laughs – his characteristic high-pitched chuckle, a laugh totally unlike Kevin’s raucous guffaw. My heart lifts, floating in my chest. I can hardly breathe.

I hear their voices, but I can’t understand what they’re saying. There is the sound of padlocked chests being opened, the moving and dragging of heavy objects. Obviously, they are making preparations for the performance, setting the props and furniture in place. Someone begins to whistle.

I work to keep within myself. Ordinarily, I’m good at waiting. It’s something that comes with spending a lot of time in airports.

But now, the immobility is almost too much. I consider making my way down the rock, taking them on. But no. My chances on the ground – three of them and one of me – are terrible. I’m only going to get one shot and it’s got to be up here.

One of them starts climbing. He’s not a stealthy climber. He bulls his way up the rock. I’m grateful for that because it makes it easy to track his progress.

Maybe it took me half an hour to climb the rock last night. It takes him about ten minutes. I see him, moments before he reaches the platform, emerging from the mist. His head is shaved. He hoists himself onto the platform easily. He’s a big, strong-looking guy, with a Maori-style tattoo curling up from the neck of his Windbreaker. He opens the metal cover of the box bolted below the upper cable and throws a switch. He pulls a walkie-talkie out of his pocket. “Okay,” he says. “Let’s go.”

I realize what this is: a test run.

A rope is tossed up and catches on one of the loops. The mechanism suspended from the upper cable moves, obviously on a signal from a remote-control device below. There must be some kind of homing mechanism attached to the end of the rope, because the pipelike device, which has a kind of articulated neck, descends, locates the rope, and tightens over the rope’s end. Winches and pulleys spring into action on either side of the chasm, pulling the cable – and with it the rope – taut as a drum. The machinery is amazingly silent, all this occurring with no more than a faint whir.

“Got it,” the big man whispers into his walkie-talkie. “Coming back your way.”

He flicks a switch on the gray box and the mechanism reverses, cables slacking, jaws holding the rope end opening to release it. The rope slaps back down to the ground.

To my relief, the big man also descends.

Twenty minutes later, I hear music from down below. Drums and a sitar. Not long afterward, the guests arrive. They make an enormous amount of noise as they enter the area of the stage.

I try not to think about the “guests” as the clink of glasses and the murmur of conversation float up to me.

At one point, I get a tickle in my throat and work hard to suppress the urge to cough, my eyes streaming tears. I’m stiff as a rock and beginning to worry that when the time comes for me to move, I’ll be unable to do so.

And then the show begins. I can hear Boudreaux’s banter as he performs different effects, and very occasionally, Kevin’s voice – or is it Sean’s? – in counterpoint. From the audience: crescendos of laughter, bursts of hearty applause and exclamations of astonishment.

The Piper, performing his tricks.

And then it happens. The Piper heaves the rope up. “Get up there!” he commands. The rope plops to the ground. “I don’t know what’s wrong,” he says. “The heavens are defying me.”

A sprinkle of laughter.

“I’ll have to really concentrate.”

Again, the rope slaps back down onto the gravel.

Again the Piper complains, urging the audience to help him will the rope to “catch in the sky.”

The child’s voice says something I can’t hear, but it earns an appreciative burst of laughter.

Another try. And then the end of the rope comes into view, ascending through the mist. How far does he have to throw it? It’s quite a feat.

And then he gets it – the rope catches. The audience cheers.

The mechanism moves into action, catches the rope in its jaws. Instantly, the pulleys and winches begin to do their job, tightening the rope from both directions until it’s taut.

“Let’s just see if it’s really up there,” the Piper says. The rope shakes – he’s testing it to make sure it won’t fall out of the sky.

“Why don’t you climb it? See what’s up there?” the Piper suggests to my son.

“I don’t know,” Kevin replies. “It’s high.”

“You’ll do as you’re told,” the Piper tells him.

“Oh, all right.”

A big round of applause as the boy starts up the rope.

The Piper continues to talk, but I’m not listening. The rope twitches back and forth.

I watch the rhythm of the rope and then I see it – Kevin’s blond hair shining as he comes up out of the fog.

He’s dressed in a loincloth, with a sash across his chest. He’s concentrating so intently that he doesn’t look toward the platform until he’s very nearly to the top. When he sees me – tears in my eyes, finger to my lips, head moving side to side in warning – there is complete and total astonishment in his eyes. I’m afraid, for one terrible moment, that the shock will loosen his grip and he’ll fall.

He fits himself into the sling with practiced ease, and then pulls himself toward me.

Then he’s on the platform. I have my arms open to embrace him, but he’s wearing a lavalier mike, alligator-clipped to his sash. I hold my finger to my lips, unclip it, fold it into the hem of my fleece jacket, squeeze it into my fist.

“Dad,” Kevin says in a whisper, his face a mix of delight and perplexity, “what are you doing here?”

I don’t know what to say.

He continues in a furious whisper. “He said we wouldn’t see you till Christmas. He said that they came to get you at the joust, the station did, that you had to go on ’signment, that he would take us home until Mommy got there. He bought us pretzels. And he did take us home, but only for a little while. And we tried to call you – he said you were on your way to the airport. I tried to call you, and you said hello, but we got cutted off. And then he told us you got in a car accident and you were very very hurt, that Mommy had to take care of you and she couldn’t take care of us, that-” His voice trails away. His face begins to collapse.

He must have known that there was something wrong. On some level, he must have understood that he was a captive. But he’s held himself together all these weeks, fitting in with what he’s been told, accepting the strange life he and his brother have been leading, trying to frame it as somehow okay, as some kind of normal existence. But underneath, he must have worried about the holes in The Piper’s story. He must have wondered why his grandparents didn’t step in. He must have wondered a million things.

Now he’s my little boy again and he starts to cry.

At last he comes into my arms and I hold him.

It’s not possible, really, to describe how this moment feels, the ineffable sweetness of reunion as I hold my son in my arms.

But it doesn’t last. I push him away, hold him at arm’s length. “Kevin, listen to me. What are you supposed to do now?” I gesture down toward the stage. “You’ve got to do everything just the way you’re supposed to.”

He shakes his head. He looks terrified. “Nothing. Oh. I have to slide this back.” He flicks his wrist and sends the sling back to the middle. “Then I just wait.”

“How long?”

He shrugs.

“Until he calls up to me.”

“Look, Kev.” I put a hand on his shoulder. “You have to understand that-”

“I thought I made you crash,” he tells me, his voice thin and full of tears. “Mommy says cell phones are dangerous.”

“Kevin – I wasn’t in an accident. Mr. Boudreaux lied to you.”

“Who?”

“Mr. Carrefour?”

“Doctor Carrefour,” he corrects me. “Doc.”

“Okay. Well, whoever he is – he kidnapped you. I wasn’t hurt or sick. Mom and I have been out of our minds searching for you. Do you think your mother would really not be with you boys, no matter what?”

“But he said we were helping, he said we…” His voice is querulous now, unsure. He starts to cry again.

“Kevin.” I pause, shut my eyes. “He’s planning to kill you – it’s part of his magic. It’s a part of his show. And then he’ll kill Sean, too.”

“But why?”

I shake my head. “You have to help me now.”

“Dad? Is it going to be okay?”

“Absolutely. But you have to listen to me. You have to do exactly what you’re supposed to do. And then, when he comes up the rope – I want you to hide.” I take his hand, pull him around, show him the tiny niche behind the platform.

“What if I fall? Dad – I might fall.”

“You won’t fall. You have great balance. Remember the Jacob’s ladder? You were the only kid who did it.”

The Piper’s amplified voice rises up to us. “What do you see up there, boy?”

“Dad,” Kevin whispers, “the Jacob’s ladder – that was Sean.”

Stupid as it is – this stops me for a moment and I can’t think of what to say. It’s a cardinal sin for the parents of twins, mixing them up.

“Kev – you can do it. There’s plenty of room. You have to. Look, I’m going to give you my backpack. I need you to keep it safe.” I do give him the backpack, more to give him a task than anything else – although I take the Maglite first, and stick it in my waistband.

The Piper’s amplified voice again. “You asleep, boy?”

Kevin looks frozen.

“I said, what do you see up there, boy?”

I open my fist, unfurl the mike from the fleece, pin it to Kevin’s sash. “Tell him,” I whisper.

“Sky,” Kevin says, his voice trembling.

A laugh from below.

“What else?”

“Clouds.” He still sounds as if he’s about to cry.

Another laugh.

“I need you back down here now.” The voice is matter-of-fact.

“But I like it up here. I don’t feel like coming down.”

They go back and forth, The Piper growing more irritated as the boy grows more defiant.

I have to leave Kevin, climb up the rock.

“If you don’t get down here this minute,” The Piper says, his voice stern now, “I’m going to have to come up and get you.”

“Go ahead,” Kevin says. “Try it, old man. I bet you can’t even climb the rope.”

I’m now wedged into my old perch above the platform. Kevin looks up at me. I motion for him – time to hide.

The rope begins to twitch back and forth as The Piper ascends.

The audience cheers.

And then I see him, his brown glossy hair coming up through the mist. Like Kevin, he’s dressed as a fakir, and like Kevin, he’s intent on the climb. In his case, the climb is made more difficult by the fact that – pirate style – he holds a knife with a curved blade between his teeth.

Very slowly and cautiously, I begin to make my way down toward him.

Once he’s reached the sling and put an arm through it, he looks toward the platform. And frowns. I can read his mind: Where’s Kevin?

He pulls himself onto the platform, and removes the knife from his mouth. “Where are you, lad?” he calls out, still in character. “Come on now, I’ve had it with you. I’m serious!”

Laughter wells up from below.

The magician gets to his feet and begins to turn.

I’m not a fighter. It’s not that I run away from confrontation. Physical fights – it just never came up much. Where I grew up, nobody got into fights; we were all too busy with scheduled activities. It wasn’t hip, it wasn’t something you did. Once I decked a kid who took my legs out in a soccer match, but the fact that I actually hit him was a piece of luck. I got kicked out of the game, benched for the next two, and had to sit through a lot of crap about the importance of self-control.

I never took karate or boxing lessons.

In other words, nothing about my background has prepared me for what I’m about to do.

And yet I come down off that rock like a raptor.

Before the man even knows I’m there, before he can turn, I’ve hit him so hard with the Maglite that I can hear the bone splinter in the back of his head. Suddenly, there’s blood everywhere – on me, on the rocks, in the air, on him.

He’s staggered, but to my amazement, he doesn’t go down. He makes a wretched, wounded sound that’s picked up by the mike, and then he turns, eyes alight, sword in hand. I could swear he’s smiling. Then he slashes at me with a sidearm motion, that misses the first time, then catches me on the way back, laying open the sleeve of my jacket and the arm beneath.

A gasp flies from my mouth as Boudreaux takes a swipe at my throat. Incredibly, the world has gone silent – or almost silent. In the adrenalized slo-mo of what seems likely to be my murder, I can hear the surf crashing and the hushed expectancy – or maybe it’s the puzzlement – of our audience beneath the fog.

I take another swing with the flashlight, and miss, then block another swipe of the knife. The edge of the blade skitters along the Maglite’s shaft, slices into my fingers, and sends a spray of blood into my eyes.

Boudreaux takes a step backward, and gathers himself. For a moment, he stands there, panting and swaying, the knife hanging down at his side. It’s almost as if he’s about to collapse. Heartened, I take a step toward him, then stagger back, as he lunges toward me with a roar. Like an orchestra conductor gone amok, he slashes wildly at the air, snarling, feral and insane. The madness comes off him like heat from a furnace.

From behind me, I hear a gasp from Kevin, half-whimper, half-scream. The sound electrifies me. At once frantic and enraged, terrified and furious, I throw myself at the magician, and we go down on the platform in a tangle of blood, growls, and groans.

Incredibly, I’m on top, with my forearm across his throat, and my right hand pinning his wrist to the ground. He makes a feeble effort to hit me with his other hand, but he hasn’t any strength left. After a moment, his muscles relax, and his eyes soften.

“Now what?” he asks.

With my heart slamming against my chest, it takes more than a moment to get my breath. When I’m able to stand, I do and, reaching down, grab Boudreaux by the hair, and pull him to his feet.

He’s leering. “And how do you think you’re going to get me down?”

I speak in a low voice, almost a growl. “That’s the easy part, you wiggy fuck,” I tell him. And with that, I grab him by the scruff of the neck, spin him around, and, with a shove, send him off the edge of the spire, tumbling with a scream toward his fan club sixty feet below.

It’s chaos down in the amphitheater, everybody screaming and shouting. Kevin crawls out from the little niche toward me, terrified and sobbing. I’m cut, bleeding all over the platform. Still on my feet, I’m shaky and there’s a lot of blood, but I’m okay.

I know we have to act quickly. Right now, the people below may be thinking simply that Boudreaux’s fall was an accident. Then again, maybe not.

I don’t know what makes me think that the boys who were to be the centerpiece of the show have, for the moment, been forgotten. Sean himself might easily have wondered what was going on and emerged from his hiding place to find out. But I don’t think so. I think he’s in the basket, waiting for his cue.

“Kevin,” I say, “we have to get Sean.”

He doesn’t argue, although his eyes are huge. “Dad, you’re really bleeding.”

“It’s okay.”

Kevin’s a natural. Together, we scramble easily down the rock face. Halfway down, we come out of the mist and I tell him to stop for a moment. “We have to be careful now. Stay to the side near the ocean, so they don’t see us.”

“Okay.”

Kevin climbs down, surefooted and agile as a monkey. He actually has to wait for me from time to time. I’m the one having trouble. The arm that Boudreaux cut is weak. My hand is a mess. The blood is slippery.

Even so, we’re on the ground in less than five minutes.

I have to rest, lean against the rock. From the amphitheater come the sounds of disagreement. Not too many voices. Obviously, some of the guests have decided to leave. They’re quarreling about what to do.

“What a disappointment,” a female voice says.

“A different dénouement is all,” says a British man. “Equally dramatic in its way.”

“We’re not going to call nine-one-one,” an accented voice says. “I won’t have them crawling all over the place.”

“There’s a back way,” Kevin tells me. “I can sneak in. I can talk to Sean. He’ll hear me through the basket.”

I follow my son as we creep along toward the back of the stage. The sound of the sea helps because I’m so weak I’m clumsy, and more than once I stumble.

From our vantage point, I can see the little gathering of guests, I can just see Boudreaux’s leg, crumpled oddly at the knee, at an angle impossible in life.

The basket is at center stage, terribly exposed.

Before I can stop Kevin, he’s gone. I see him approach the basket, I see the basket quiver slightly. I can’t believe Sean can get out of it without being seen.

It comes to me: misdirection. Just as I see the top of the basket tremble, I pull the Maglite from the pack and hurl it to the right, throwing it as far as I can. It cartwheels through the air, end over end, and lands, with a huge percussive clang against the rocks.

All heads turn toward the sound as Sean scrambles out. I see the little group in the theater begin to move slowly toward the point of impact, as the boys dash toward me.

It couldn’t be more than a half-mile walk from the amphitheater to the Sea Ranch beach. We don’t have to go out into the water. It’s a simple walk along the hardened sand, amid the rocks. I know that sooner or later, someone will come after us and I do my best to hurry. It seems to take forever before I see that string of razor wire demarcating the property line between Mystère and the Sea Ranch.

Another silver-haired couple – the same ones? – walk the rocky beach. I turn toward them, one boy on each arm. They’re tugging me along now, I’m moving so slowly. And then I just can’t manage another step.

“It’s okay,” I tell the boys, trying to get my feet moving. “It’s going to be okay.” I stumble and fall.

Kevin takes off like a shot, and I see the three figures, the elegant couple bending slightly to catch my son’s words. Kevin points – they look our way.

Sean holds my hand in a ferocious grip.

Kevin and the couple are running now, and I see that the man has a cell phone to his ear.

My eyes close.

“Dad,” Kevin says.

“Sea Ranch,” the man is saying into the phone. Down on the beach. “Meg, I’m going to get the Jeep.”

“Oh, my God,” the woman says. She wraps something around my injured hand. “You boys, you press down on this,” she says. “Just like this, okay?”

“Yes.”

“Stan! Your coat.” She wraps my injured arm and compresses the wound. “Keep up the pressure, boys, that’s great.”

“Is he going to be all right?” Kevin asks, his voice trembling.

“Yes,” the woman says in a confident voice. “Everything’s going to be just fine.”

And somehow, although I suspect she’s said this just to calm the boys, I know she’s right.