Kill The President's Women (Joe The Magic Man Series Book 2) (3 page)

One agent stood up to say, “There’s no report yet sir, but I’m sure our people in the field will spot them soon. They are two suspects that can’t speak English so hopefully, that will be their down fall.”

Frank seemed irritated by that line of logic. “They can speak Arabic and French. Do you know how many people speak Arabic and French in America?”

“No sir,” the agent answered tentatively.

“Then google it!” he said impatiently, “or better yet, use our database. I believe we have one.”

The agent groped for words and then said limply, “What I meant, sir, was that we’ll find them.”

Frank turned away. He had a feeling the terrorists had no intention of being found until they had carried out their mission: the murder of the President’s congress-bitches.

The al-Qaeda affiliates in America were always quick to come out when there was a protest against the government but most of those protesters wouldn’t put their lives in danger by strapping a bomb on or driving a car bomb into a building full of people. But they’d be more than willing to help if two brothers came forward as suicide bombers and said they would do it.

The Boston bombers at the marathon were still fresh in Frank’s mind and he didn’t want anything like that to happen again if he could stop it. He had to do everything to make sure that these two brothers were found.

He wondered if he should have Joe the Magic Man in on this case to see if Joe could work some of his magic for him. Maybe the owner of the Thailand restaurant knew more than he claimed. Maybe Joe could get into the restaurant owner’s dreams and find out; maybes were always worth a try when it came to the Magic Man. It was ironic because it had only been a few weeks since Frank had given his men orders to find and eliminate the Magic Man. Now he was thinking of asking for his help again.

He sighed inwardly thinking,
How pathetic.

Frank didn’t think the fact that the FBI might need the Magic Man on this case to be the only pathetic thing; the whole affair with him was pathetic for the FBI, as highly-equipped and highly-trained as they were, couldn’t find one man on US soil.

The FBI had been trying to catch the Magic Man for over six years, with no luck. They had a profiler from the BAU department at Quantico, Special Agent Rosemary Burrows do a profile on the Magic Man. She said it was like doing a profile on an invisible man; no one ever saw him. The Magic Man was a high value asset because of the unusual gift he possessed: the infiltration of a subject’s very mind through their dreams.

The Magic Man could get into people’s dreams and control their dreams; he could hypnotize them while they were asleep and control their minds, leaving them with a memory of only what he saw fit while erasing everything else. The nature of his gift was considered a threat by the government for they didn’t like someone with such invasive powers. The list of potential damage he could cause if he so wanted was virtually endless: he could spy on anyone successfully; he could even ruin the banks and the economy of the country. Frank had written in one of his reports on the Magic Man that it was safe to assume that he could plant thoughts and ideas in the mind of a subject.

The malevolent possibilities of his powers notwithstanding, Joe the Magic Man was often guilty of using them for very mundane and perverse actions. He particularly favored an act where he’d get into a couple’s dreams and have them play out his fantasies in their bed for him. Joe was capable of orchestrating the dream from his bed hundreds of miles away while seeing, feeling, thinking and experiencing what they were experiencing in their dreams.

In those dreams, the Magic Man could take on the appearance of anyone. He could be the woman’s husband, her lover or just an admirer. This was part of the reason Special Agent Burrows found it difficult to put a profile on someone who had never been at the scene of the crime; his only crime was the invasion of the mind.

Frank thought back to one occasion when the FBI thought they had come across a breakthrough.
The
y thought that Joe the Magic Man had made his first mistake when he entered the dreams of John and Alice Timberlake. The Magic Man had taken on the appearance of a prison officer and had called himself Joe in Alice’s dream.

Joe had used John and Alice to fulfill his sexual fantasies, just like hundreds of other couples before them but he didn’t move on readily; he simply kept coming back. This was because Alice Timberlake was different, somehow she knew Joe was in her dreams and she had fought back. She had lashed out at him in one of her dreams, telling him to get out of her dreams and leave her and her husband alone.

This awareness had intrigued Joe the Magic Man, for none of his previous victims ever had a clue what was happening to them; he had complete control over them in their dreams.

The struggle for the control of Alice’s mind continued and in one of those dreams, she told Joe that she had been to the police, that the FBI had him on their most wanted list, and that Special Agent Rosemary Burrows was doing a profile on him. So Joe the Magic Man decided to visit Alice every night in her dreams to find out what the FBI was up too.

Eventually, Joe the Magic Man decided to talk to Agent Burrows through Alice’s dreams. He told Alice in one of her dreams to plead his innocence for him, to tell the FBI that he had never committed a crime. Burrows wasn’t too sure about Joe’s story and when Agent Burrows told her boss at the FBI that the Magic Man was able to have a serious conversation with Alice when he was in her dreams, and that Alice would remember it all in the morning as if they had been sitting down at the table and having a chat, they laughed it off as a serious joke.

On hearing the latest turn of events, the Defense Secretary decided the Magic Man was too much of a risk to be left loose on the streets and he put Frank Brubaker in charge of finding him and eliminating him. Frank had tried to be cunning, by offering the Magic Man a pardon, an indemnification of all crimes if he turned himself in.

The plan was rather simple. If Joe swallowed the bait, he would actually be given a pardon. Shortly after though, since his identity would have been revealed, Joe would be made to meet with an unfortunate, fatal accident.

The plan had failed.

That particular line of action was only one out of several others devised to make Joe go away but they had all failed.

Frank thought hard, wondering whether it was a good idea to use the Magic Man in tracking down the two terrorists. There wouldn’t be too much approval from above – that much was clear, for there were still a lot of the big brass in the Pentagon that wanted the Magic Man dead. But the more Frank thought about Joe, the more he could see how a proper harnessing would be beneficial to the country. Besides, Joe had helped them to solve two cases before. It was with Joe’s help that they found the four students that were going around snatching girls off the street and gang raping them. Joe had gotten into one of the boys’ dreams and the boy, unable to control himself, had told Joe how they did it, and where they had hidden the mattress and the blanket. The FBI had retrieved the items and found forensic evidence linking the boys to the kidnappings and rape of the four girls.

The way the Magic Man had helped to bust a drug ring in California had been even more impressive. The Magic Man had gotten into the dreams of a young drug pusher, and found out what he knew about his boss. By jumping from one mind to the other, he got into the boss’s dreams and worked his way up the chain of command, until the Magic Man had the names of all the dealers right up to the drug lord. A new school of thought sprung up immediately in Law Enforcement; they felt the Magic Man would be a great asset to be called upon to assist the FBI, the DEA and even the CIA.

After those two cases, Frank had put a new task force together to use Joe’s powers, and the only way he was able do that was to have Agent Burrows continue working with Alice Timberlake, as Alice was the only one who could contact Joe in her dreams and remember it clearly in the morning. He laughed aloud at how bizarre that sounded: two civilians helping the FBI through their dreams.

Then Frank remembered his little encounter with the Magic Man, and the laugh turned to a growl. Frank had had his men lay a trap to catch the Magic Man a few times, only to have him slip through the net. Then one morning, when Frank got up from his bed, he found a note on his kitchen table addressed to him, in his own handwriting. That was enough to freak anyone, including him, out. The Magic Man had been in his dreams and hypnotized him to get up in his sleep and write a letter to himself on behalf of the Magic Man. A cold shiver went through Frank as he remembered that day.

In the letter
, the Magic Man called him “Boss” and told him he looked forward to working with him and his team, but that they would never meet again. Frank put his arms on his desk, leaned forward and bowed his head in shame as he recalled how easily the Magic Man had gotten into his head. A short while before that, Frank had been walking in the parking lot when an old man asked him if he had dropped a badge. The old man held out an FBI pin-badge that most of the agents had pinned on their coat lapels. Frank had said it wasn’t his but that he would hand it over at the desk. With ploy as simple as that, the Magic Man had gotten into Frank’s mind, then into his dreams.

Joe had advised Frank in the letter to trust him as he would never ask him any questions about state security. He told him he would never get into his mind again, and not to go resigning or blowing his brains out, because his invasion of Frank’s mind was a one-off and wouldn’t happen again. Frank had worked too hard to get where he was and he wasn’t ready to throw it all away, so instead of shooting himself, he decided to trust Joe the Magic Man, and make use of his gift.

A day earlier, Agent Burrows’ department had asked Frank’s permission to use Joe to help solve a cold case, and Frank had said “yes”. Now he was thinking that the case at hand was more important than a cold case file.

Frank marched out of his office to his assistant’s desk, put his hand on his shoulder and said casually as if ordering a takeaway, “Get Agent Burrows over to our Cisco office ASAP. Tell her it’s top priority and tell her to get that Alice Timberlake woman up there pronto. We need the Magic Man in on this.”

“Yes sir, top priority,” came the understanding reply.

*

Alice Timberlake was having her breakfast and reading the cold case file that Agent Burrows had sent her by special delivery. Alice was twenty seven years of age, 5feet 6inches tall with brown eyes and black hair that she mostly wore in a ponytail. She lived in Lancaster, California and up until her encounter with the Magic Man a few months ago, she led a normal life with her husband, John. She was an assistant to an agony-aunt writer in their local newspaper, working part-time from home. Her husband John was a prison officer and they had been married for five years with no kids.

With her help, the FBI had contacted Joe and he had helped to solve two crimes. More importantly, the FBI said she could become a freelance journalist, with access to the inside story on all the cases that Joe and her were working on. They had kept their word and allowed her to write freely about the rape and drug cases. Alice’s ambition since she was very tender was to be a newspaper reporter so this opportunity to work with the FBI was too good to turn down. She was only twenty seven as she kept reminding John, and she and John, (who was now thirty) would finally be able to afford to raise a child with the extra money coming in from the new firm of Joe Mann and Partner. She was running all this through her mind when her phone buzzed.

Alice looked at
her phone screen to see Agent Burrows’ name and she picked up the call. “Agent Burrows, I got the file you sent me yesterday and....”

“Forget that case, Alice. We’ve got some kind of emergency up in San Francisco,” Burrows said, interrupting her. “Drop whatever you’re doing or planning, pack an overnight case and get yourself down to the airport, pronto. We are booking you on the next flight, so just go and pick up the ticket; everything will be arranged from the office.”

“What’s the rush? I can drive up there nearly as quick as flying.”

Alice’s mind raced to what John would say, she would have to call him at work to explain her sudden departure.

“Look Alice,” Agent Borrows said, “when the Deputy Director of the FBI says he wants you, it means he wants you immediately! It’s top priority so you say, ‘yes sir, right away’ and you do it. He has even got Homeland working on this. It’s that big.”

“You make it sound so top secret... Can you tell me what it’s about?” Alice was already making her way upstairs to pick up her case.

“We’ll be briefed when we arrive, and that’s as much as I know. You’ll be met at the airport by one of our agents and you will be taken to our office there to wait for me. I’m on my way to our plane now, I’ll see you up there, okay?”

“Okay,” Alice sighed.

How could she complain? They had told her it would be like this, just called up at any time and flown anywhere. She didn’t have to think what to take as her small case was already packed with all the things she needed. She didn’t tidy up and she was soon in the car and on her way to L.A. airport. The first chance she had, she called John.

“Hi honey, what’s up? Can’t you sleep?” John asked. When he had left for work not too long ago, Alice had been fast asleep.

“I’m okay, love; you’ll never guess where I am and what I’m doing.”

“Oh, that shouldn’t be too hard to guess,” John replied. “Joe’s contacted you again last night in your dream. And both of you have come up with a plan to help Burrows.”

“Close! I’m in my car and on the way to the airport. Burrows just phoned and told me to forget the cold case file for now, and get my ass up to Cisco, pronto.”

“What? You can’t go without me!” John wanted to be involved with Alice’s work with Joe, even if it was only driving her and keeping her company.”

“Sorry love, Burrows thinks something big is going down.” She gave a nervous sigh. “FBI and Homeland want Joe’s help right away and Burrows made it sound really important.”