Page 19 of Girl, Empty (Ella Dark #27)

Murphy’s Pub was every Irish stereotype crammed into a thousand square feet of floor space.

Green everything, with more shamrocks than Ella had ever seen in her life.

The place was neither dead nor busy, and amongst the day drinkers and moms with strollers, it took Ella all of two seconds to spot David Lorraine.

‘There’s our boy,’ she said.

‘Hard to miss a man in that outfit,’ said Ripley.

Lorraine was dressed in a white suit with bright red shoes, and he was gesturing to a deck of cards that he’d spread out in front of a woman and toddler.

Both spectators looked at the deck with equal apathy, but Lorraine seemed indifferent to their indifference.

He continued his patter while Ella and Ripley took a seat in a booth nearby.

Close enough to watch but far enough to plan.

Ella watched him move. She couldn’t hear the nuances of his script, but the woman snapped to attention when a card suddenly appeared in Lorraine’s shoe.

The toddler seemed to like it too, and then Lorraine gave them a bow and turned his attention to the next table in the queue, which was theirs.

He made eye contact from across the room and sauntered over.

‘Ladies, I know, magic is passé. I wouldn’t have booked me either, but can I interest you in a moment of wonder?’

‘Sure. Would you sit?’

‘I don’t sit. It’s bad for the angles.’

‘We insist,’ said Ripley.

Lorraine seemed to reconsider, take a step back, and then he asked, ‘You guys aren’t here to drink.’

Ella had been thinking about Emma Rankin’s hair tie trick since yesterday, so she decided to channel her inner conjuror in tribute. She found her badge in her pocket, palmed it, then pretended to pull it out of the table. ‘FBI. We’d like to talk to you.’

‘Whoa. Cops. Did you just classic palm your badge?’

'Sure did.' Ella had seen a detective in some old British TV show pull the same maneuver and had always wondered if it could work in the real world. Apparently, it could.

‘Color me intrigued. Where’d you learn that, YouTube University?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Your thumb moved when you palmed it. Dead giveaway. But points for trying.’ Lorraine pulled a chair from a nearby table and finally sat himself down. A waft of spicy perfume assaulted Ella’s nostrils. ‘I assume you’re not here to talk about magic.’

‘Maybe we are, actually.’

‘Oh?’

‘I’m Agent Dark and this is Agent Ripley. We’re working with State PD on a homicide investigation.’

Lorraine straightened up. He glanced behind him, and then placed his deck of cards back in his pocket. ‘Doesn’t sound much like magic to me.’

‘Mr. Lorraine, we understand you consulted on security for Morrison & Associates.’

‘Among others.’

‘And First National Bank.’

‘Guilty.’ He produced a business card from nowhere, slid it across the table. ‘Security consultation by day. Magician by… day as well. I’ve got a passion for both.’

Ella took his business card, then studied his body language from head to toe. There were no immediate tells, so he was either innocent or so guilty he'd rehearsed this moment like any other performance.

Lorraine continued, ‘Okay, so cards on the table, so to speak – I know Michael Rankin is dead. Everyone in the city knows Michael Rankin is dead. And yes, I sort of knew him.’

‘Talk us through your relationship with him.’

‘Relationship? Nothing like that. Michael wanted a magician for his daughter’s birthday party last year. Someone at his work recommended me. I did the gig. End of story.’

‘So you’re saying you only met him once?’

‘Not even once. Michael wasn’t at the party.

He was stuck at work according to his wife, and I felt really bad for his little girl, so I stuck around after the show and showed her some magic one-on-one.

She loved it. Hopefully it distracted her from the fact her dad is a waster.

I’m sure he brought home the bacon, but a rich deadbeat is still a deadbeat. ’

The comment suggested resentment, but Lorraine delivered it so casually that Ella had to reconsider. He didn’t strike her as the killer type, and there didn’t seem to be much motivation beyond Lorraine’s general disdain for work addicts. ‘You didn’t like Michael Rankin, then?’

Lorraine shrugged. ‘Like I said, I never met the man. He might have been the nicest guy on earth, but I’ve seen a million guys like him who throw money at their families to make up for them never being there. I got no time for that.’

‘You have a family of your own, Mr. Lorraine?’ asked Ripley.

‘Sure do. Married for thirty years, four kids, and no I’ve never missed a birthday.’

By Ella’s admission, Lorraine was saying the kind of things an innocent man would say. Guilty men lied with purpose. They volunteered nothing and denied everything. Lorraine was making judgments on Rankin's character. It was messy, human, and completely pointless from a killer's perspective.

‘What about Thomas Grayson?’ Ella asked.

‘Grayson? Never heard the name.’

Ella and Ripley shared a look. Ella knew better than to trust a man who lied for a living, but the authenticity radiated off him, even in that glossy suit. ‘You assisted with the security measures at Morrison & Associates and First National Bank. We need you to tell us about them.’

Lorraine scratched his neck with an unnecessary flourish, like he might have been dumping an object behind his back. Maybe it was one of those magic moves that he’d practiced so many times the natural act was no longer natural. ‘What’s First National got to do with this? Rankin worked at Morrison.’

‘Rankin isn’t the only one.’

‘You’re kidding? Two murders?’

‘Two murders, both in buildings you assisted with security for, security which our perpetrator bypassed without breaking a sweat.’

Lorraine sat back in his chair and folded his arms. The classic defensive gesture – put a barrier between you and your audience. If you created a barricade, it gave the fallible human mind permission to lie.

‘Bypassed security? In what way?’

‘Maybe start by telling us where you were the past two nights.’

‘You suspect me of killing two people?’

‘Suspect is a strong word. You’re technically a person of interest,’ Ella said.

‘What’s the difference?’

‘The difference depends on where you’ve been the past two nights, specifically between midnight and one AM.’

‘Fine. Last night I was at home with my wife and my youngest. Went to bed about eleven, got up at nine. The night before I did a corporate gig at the Tontine Hotel over on Belfast Street. I finished about midnight.’

Ella sighed through her nose. If Lorraine was telling the truth, and had the receipts to back it up, he was off the hook. ‘Can you prove that?’

‘Easy. There’s a video of me at the Tontine, and my doorbell cam will confirm I never left the house.’

Ripley said, ‘We’re going to need more than that.’

‘More than footage of me not being the killer? If that’s not an alibi, what the hell is?’

‘We’ll need eyewitness accounts, because our perp is pretty good at manipulating technology.’

‘How good?’

‘Where to start?’ Ella said. ‘At the Morrison building, the cameras blacked out one by one, then he managed to access the elevator and circumvent the weight measurement, biometric scanner and retinal scanner. At First National, he got through three security doors and somehow opened the bank vault.’

The blood drained from David Lorraine’s face and left a canvas of pale skin behind. The showman in him evaporated, and he suddenly sat rigid in his chair. ‘Are you kidding?’

‘No.’

Lorraine went quiet for a long moment. Ella let him process the fact that the robust security measured he’d designed had been violated with apparent ease. ‘Do you have any idea how it was done? Inside job? Corrupt security guard? Anything?’

‘We don’t know. We were hoping you could shed some light on things. The whole thing seems impossible.’

Lorraine violently scratched his beard and then blew out a breath. ‘Nothing’s impossible. Only things that look impossible. Just like magic, there’s always some simple explanation, and it’s usually so obvious that most people look right past it.’

‘So you're saying you know how this could have been done?’

‘No. But…’ – Lorraine glanced over his shoulder then back at the agents – ‘Could we go somewhere else? I don’t want to talk about this out here.’