Out of Reach: A Novel by Patricia Lewin Page B

to check out Dr. Baker’s story, and that I need you and your partner to come along as backup.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Oh, and tell him . . .”
Sometimes you have to break the rules.
“Tell him I’m taking Dr. Baker with me.” He shot a questioning look at the woman in front of him. His best shot at catching this guy was if she pointed him out. “That is, if she’s willing.”
    She nodded.
    Officer Lamont arched an eyebrow but didn’t comment before hurrying off to make the calls.
    Alec turned back to the woman. “Give me a minute, Dr. Baker.” Moving out of earshot, he pulled out his cell phone.
    When he had Cathy on the line, he said, “I need everything we have on a woman named Erin Baker. She’s a Ph.D. on the faculty at Georgetown. Start there, and then see what else you can find on her, including a 1985 missing child case in Miami.”
    “Who is she?”
    “A potential witness in the Chelsea Madden case, and she seems to be . . .”—
more
—“. . . not what she claims. I need to know if she’s reliable.”
    “Any connection to the Cody Sanders case?”
    “I don’t know yet. It’s possible.”
    “What’s going on, Alec?”
    He hesitated, knowing that this time not even Cathy would believe him. “I think we’ve found the Magician.”

VI
    I SAAC G AGE WATCHED the chaos he’d created.
    The cops had cordoned off all entrances to the park. A crowd had gathered on the fringes, neighborhood gawkers huddled together to swap stories and share theories about the missing girl. A half-dozen uniforms milled about, some pacing the perimeters keeping the natives at bay, while the others stood gulping coffee and resenting that they’d been stuck up here while the real fun was down in the park, with the hunt. As if in reminder of their low status, from deep in the woods along the river, dogs barked as they tried to pick up a scent.
    Isaac rarely missed returning to a kidnapping site. It was a small treat, which he figured he’d earned. The risk of someone recognizing him was nearly nonexistent. Watching, he was never the same man as the one who’d executed the abduction. So he allowed himself a brief tour through the lives of the people he had shattered. And he enjoyed the hell out of it.
    He knew the criminal psychologists and profilers would have a field day with that little piece of information. They would try to analyze him and predict his next move—as they’d done in a dozen previous incarnations—blaming his misdeeds on an abnormal childhood.
    Well, his early years
had
been pretty fucked up, but so had the lives of most of the kids he’d met as his family moved from place to place, courtesy of Uncle Sam. His father had been career army, a hard-drinking, heavy-fisted colonel, who’d taken out his frustrations over his lackluster military career on his only son. Isaac had learned early to disappear whenever the old man was around. Sober or not.
    Isaac had no complaints, though. He’d grown up strong, fast, and smart. It had been a matter of survival, and he’d been good at it. Something that couldn’t be said for most of the kids who crossed his path now.
    Plus the life of an army brat had taught him another skill that had served him well. With each move to a new base, he’d become a different kind of kid: a jock, a brain, a troublemaker and rabble-rouser, or social and popular. Whatever role struck him the first time he walked into a new school, that’s what he’d become. It was a game he loved, and it had kept the boredom at bay.
    Over the years, he’d perfected the art, developing an uncanny ability to take on different personas and blend in where he didn’t belong. People—even children—tended to trust him without question. Therefore, he could go anywhere, be anyone, he wanted. It was a rare gift, and he’d capitalized on it.
    Though lately, monotony had begun to creep in, making him restless. No one had come close to identifying, much less catching him, in more years than he cared