Magicide Read Online Free PDF

don’t know what went wrong,” the man began, “but I noticed...”
    He paused and they waited. As anxious as Cheri was to get concrete information, she knew this was not the moment to press. She tried to give him a respectful, encouraging expression. They stood eye-to-eye and she had the thought that height intimidated him.
    Digbee, breath ragged, finally said, “Maxwell had escaped from the handcuffs, but the manacle on his left ankle ... God, his foot, it’s there, still attached to the track...the leg manacle wasn’t the usual one he uses.”
    “Meaning?”
    “Maxwell always preferred to use traditional jump cuffs and manacles. The one on his left foot was... different.”
    “How—different?”
    “The jump cuff has a release pin that looks like a hinge pin.” He turned his head toward the coroner’s assistants, who crawled over the platform and tracks, examining what was left of Maxwell’s foot and the manacle that had held it to the track. “That one doesn’t have a release pin.”
    Pizzarelli asked, “How do you know?”
    “I watched him try to release it,” Digbee said, his voice a shocked monotone. “It should have been easy, but he couldn’t pull it out. Afterwards I... reached up myself to try it. It had a normal hinge. There was no release pin.”
    The bystanders had been removed from the immediate scene, yet Cheri was aware of the crowd lingering beyond the police tape. Because of the noise she had to speak louder than she would have liked. “Wouldn’t Maxwell have recognized the difference beforehand?”
    Digbee’s shoulders moved forward in a nervous half-shrug. “Not unless he tried it himself. He’ s⎯ he wa s⎯ a great magician. He knows how to get out of anything. He tested each piece of the apparatus not two hours ago.” Digbee leaned directly into her face and spoke fiercely. “I’m telling you, I think the manacle was switched, at the last minute. This was no accident.”
    “What do you mean by that?” The loud voice came from behind her. She turned and faced a man she didn’t know. At five foot ten, she always noticed height first, and this man was short. Even though the desert night temperature remained high, he wore a gray windbreaker the same color as his eyes, which were framed by a heavy fringe of hair. His face featured skin that had seen too much sun and stretched from cheekbone to cheekbone like bad plastic surgery. She would have liked to be able to raise a camera to each person she met, capture the hidden secrets behind their facial expressions.
    Digbee regarded the shorter man with cold, knowing eyes. “Edmund. Detectives, this is Maxwell’s personal coordinator—Edmund Meiner.” When he spoke the man’s name, his voice dripped with contempt.
    Pizzarelli and Cheri shook hands with the man in the gray windbreaker. She wasn’t prepared for such a vise-like grip from such a small hand and was startled not only by its crushing strength but the damp impression it left. Discretely she tried to wipe her hand on the side of her slacks and wiggle the circulation back into her fingers.
    “Someone switched one of Maxwell’s leg manacles,” Digbee said to the other man.
    “Who would do that?” Meiner’s shoulders shifted inside his windbreaker. His hands were back in his pockets.
    Digbee’s words came out as a verbal sneer. “Don’t you know?”
    “Of course not. What makes you think I would know?”
    “I thought you knew everything.”
    Cheri tapped a note into her palm pilot that these two men did not even attempt to hide their animosity for each other. There was a history here, she was sure, and she wanted to know what it was, and what it might have to do with Maxwell beyond their working relationships with the magician.
    Edmund Meiner stepped closer to Digbee, who glared but did not step back.
    “Whoa, guys,” Pizzarelli said, holding up a hand, palm outward, to the two men. His tone alone was enough to distract their attention from each other.