Claire Driscoll sat at the interview table alone, waiting for the agents to enter the room. As she looked around the room, taking in the lack of any decorations whatsoever, she started to wonder if prisons were called "correctional facilities" because that's what they sought to do, correct you of your mindsets and actions. And, if that's the case, what do you do when you incarcerate someone who doesn't think they did anything wrong? Sure, now on medication Claire could see her actions for what they were, monstrous, and yet..and yet a part of her still stood by them. She believed in a greater good, perhaps the greatest good. Nobody else saw it yet, that was the problem. Finally the door opened and Agent Siskel and Agent Tropper entered. She smiled at them as Tropper leaned against the wall and continued drinking his coffee while Siskel sat at the table, putting a manila folder down in front of her.
"Good afternoon," Claire said, "How are you guys doing today?" "We're fine, thanks," Agent Siskel replied, "Claire, before we get into anything serious, I wanna ask you a question. What do you think people come to Vegas for?" Claire was taken by surprise. Certainly this was not the kind of discussion she had been expecting, but she decided she'd play along. She thought about it for a moment, chewing on her cheek. "Uh, gambling, probably, right? Debauchery. The kind of things you can only get away with here. Entertainment being a close second. Everyone always says that, right? 'Let's go take in a show!' or whatever. There's a lot of stuff you can only see in Vegas. High class strippers, call girls, nude poetry readings." "That's a thing?" Agent Tropper asked, raising an eyebrow. "They're not as fun as they sound," Agent Siskel replied. "How do you know??" he asked, now even more curious. "Why? Why are you asking me these things? Look, my compound was on the outskirts of the city, I was as far removed from Vegas as one could be while still technically living in it. I came into the city for work, groceries, shit like that. Why are you-" "You never came into the city to see, maybe, a magic show?" Agent Siskel asked, and Claire's eyes widened. "...I don't think so," she said, laughing, "I don't go to stuff like that. I hate crowds." "You ran a cult," Agent Tropper remarked. "Yeah, a crowd I could control," Claire replied, "Why are you asking me about magic shows?" "Because apparently, a few days ago, you had a visitor come by, a magician named Allie Meers. Why'd she come to visit you? You guys weren't friends, right? You didn't run in the same social circles, so why would she come by and see you? She just a fan of your work?" Agent Siskel asked. "I'm allowed to have fans, serial killers are some of the most revered people in the public eye now," Claire said, "What that says about the public is a whole other discussion, but hey, I'll take my wins where I can get 'em." "Claire," Agent Siskel said, leaning forward and cupping her hands as she smiled, "how about we make a deal?" Claire squinted, her brow furrowing. "What kind of deal?" she asked. *** "You ever design a funeral home?" Allie asked, as she and Molly were driving out towards the compound. Molly was sitting in the passenger seat, eating a jerky stick while Molly drove. "I don't like funeral homes. I don't like death. I don't even like cemeteries," she replied, "I acknowledge that they're interesting buildings, certainly, and it might be a structurally challenging design, sure. But no, I've never designed a funeral home. Why?" "Just curious, just seeing what you've done," Allie said, shrugging. Molly scratched her forehead and pushed her hair from her eyes, sighing. She never, in a million years, would've expected her life to take the turn it had. On one hand, she wanted to be furious, she wanted to scream and claw Allie's eyes out for what she'd dragged her into. On the other hand, she was weirdly thankful that these people trusted her enough to include her. She supposed that's what happens to a person when they spend their life excluded, any inclusion, no matter what kind, becomes oddly endearing and welcome. "Why are we meeting at the compound? Wouldn't the cops be keeping a close eye on this place?" Molly asked. "Why would they? The leader's been arrested, everyone's disbanded for the time being, it's just sitting here. All the more damning would be if we showed up at her funeral home and left with a tomb. That'd be something somebody would notice. This place, as far as they're concerned, is just a big empty lot of land now," Allie said. Molly shrugged. Allie had a point. If nobody would be here regularly, why bother watching it? She took another bite of her jerky stick and chewed, thinking about Zoe. The only reason Molly was the one coming along for this ride was because Zoe said she couldn't. Zoe had told them that she had some personal things to take care of regarding her family, and they respected that, especially Molly, after hearing just how rough her meeting with her parents had gone. "Welp," Allie said, "Here it is." They barreled down a dirt road and finally came to a large gate that encased the compound. After pulling up at the keypad and speaker, Allie rolled down her window and waited. Nothing happened. After a minute she glanced at Molly, who just shrugged, still chewing. "You Allie?" a voice asked through the speaker, making them both jump and laugh nervously. "Yeah, that's me," Allie replied back, "Claire sent us to retrieve the package." "Pull in and park, then come to building C," the voice said, before the speaker crackled and went quiet. The gates unlocked automatically and began to slide open, allowing Allie to drive through. She looked at Molly and smirked. "Fancy, I feel like royalty," she said. "Might as well get used to this sort of thing," Molly said, "This is probably what prison will be like." "If I can escape out of a locked box, what makes you think I couldn't escape from prison?" Allie asked. *** Rachel St Sebastian was one of the very few people Claire trusted outside the compound. They'd met early on into Claire being in Vegas, and had become quick friends, in part thanks to Claire's weirdly morbid curiosity of her line of work. Rachel was a mortician. It was a family inherited trade, not something she necessarily chose to go to school for, but it was also something she never really minded outright. As she'd once told Claire, "I like working with the dead. At least the dead don't argue." When she got the call from Claire in prison about the 'package', she knew she had to help. If there was one thing Rachel hated, it was the cops. She'd taken her friend, and now her life, from her and she'd do anything to fight back against them, even just a little. So when she was told to hold the package until Allie showed up, and then turn it over to her, she took the opportunity without thinking twice. She'd seen Allie Meers before, while being downtown. Never in person, just on billboards or on local commercials for the hotel, so she was sort of excited about meeting a pseudo celebrity. And, best of all, she didn't care one bit about what Allie's participation in this situation was. If anything, she was even more sympathetic to Allie than she ever could've been to Claire. *** "You'd think that with all this land, you'd at least get some horses," Molly said as Allie parked and they climbed down from the truck. Molly turned and looked at the truck and asked, "did you get a truck with a trailer so we could easily transport it?" "It was either that or tying him to the roof like a mattress," Allie said, making Molly laugh. They began to walk away from the truck and towards building C, as instructed. Just as they approached, the doors swung open, and a tall woman, her hair in a messy bun, dressed in a floral short sleeve shirt and khaki pants, strode out to meet them. She was smoking a cigarette, and tossed it on the ground as they approached, stomping it out with her boot. "So," she said, looking between Allie and Molly, "didn't know you'd have help, but it makes sense." "Well i can't do this myself," Allie said, "Should I pull the truck around or...?" "No, I've got a dolly we can wheel him out on," Rachel replied. "He's not a dresser," Molly said, making Allie chuckle. "Come on, follow me," Rachel said, and the girls did as they were told. They entered a large room, clearly a medical pavilion of some kind for the people who had lived here, and continued through to another, smaller attached room where, on a metal slab, sat the tomb with a tarp wrapped around it. Allie stopped short, her breath caught in her chest. She hadn't seen the tomb since they'd buried it - well, besides on the news, but she meant more in person - and seeing it now, even if wrapped in something, it made her feel queasy. "Why's there a tarp over it?" Molly asked. "Because he's kinda ugly to look at," Rachel said, "he's decomposing for god sakes. You think I wanna see that every time I come in here? So you got a plan of what to do with him?" "Yeah," Allie said softly as she approached and looked at the tarp covered tomb up close, "...I have a tiger." *** "Why would a magician come to see you?" Agent Siskel asked, leaning back in her chair, crossing her legs, "I mean, you say she could be a fan, but maybe there's more to it than that, right?" "Maybe she had the hots for me after seeing me on TV," Claire replied, shrugging, leaning back in her own chair and folding her arms, "Did you know that serial killers get more marriage proposals than anyone else in prison? What does that say about the mental state of the people in this country that they find violence romantically intriguing?" "What'd you guys talk about?" Agent Siskel asked, still pushing. "You said something about a deal," Claire said, "and, much as I'd love to take that offer, I have nothing to give in return for it. She came, we chatted about what I did, that was that, sorry to disappoint you, agents. Besides, why the sudden interest in this woman? I thought you guys were watching Sunny's sister?" "We are," Agent Tropper said, "but that tomb had to come from somewhere, and we saw it up close, we know that it's a magician prop, so if a magician suddenly comes to see you, then it stands to reason that she might have been involved somehow. Claire, you have an opportunity here to gain some freedom. You could help us. All we wanna know is why she came to talk to you." Claire hesitated, thinking it over. If she walked, would she have anything to walk back to? They'd disbanded her cult, they'd ruined her reputation, they'd taken everything from her. What really would she be returning to? "You know, it's funny," Claire finally said, grinning slightly, "all I wanted to do was help people, you know? That's why I formed the 'cult', as you call it. I wanted to give people who didn't feel like they belonged a place they could belong to. A family, in a way. I didn't ask anything of them, I just wanted them to feel welcome and loved. Now, here I am, sitting in this prison, and none of them has come to see me." "Well, considering what you wound up doing, did you expect them to?" Agent Tropper asked, "I mean, not to speak for anyone but, for me personally, if I found out the person I trusted most was arrested for keeping dead bodies in the walls, that'd probably sour my opinion of them." "Fair," Claire said, "I acknowledge that, but it still stings, you feel me? Actually, that's not true, one person did come to see me. Rachel St Sebastian. She's my oldest friend, and she didn't abandon me, so that was nice." "...why do I know that name?" Agent Siskel asked, looking at Agent Tropper, who shrugged. "Because she's the mortician I suggested you use to extract Sunny from the tomb," Claire said, "She's great at what she does, she's highly recognized in her field. She came to see me, she's called a few times, she hasn't left me to rot, and for that, I appreciate her. You know, last time we talked, she told me a story about someone else in her line of work who somehow lost someone they were working on. Someone brought in a young man, someone who had fallen while hiking and had frozen to death, and this other mortician, god knows how they managed to do it, somehow lost the body in transit." Agent Tropper and Agent Siskel exchanged a glance. "Why...why are you telling us this?" Agent Tropper asked as Claire grinned. "Because it's funny, isn't it? People just disappear all the time, even from the places you least expect, in a way almost like life and death itself, one moment they're here, the next they're not," Claire said, "almost like magic." That's when it struck Agent Siskel. Her eyes widened, her jaw slacked. Claire leaned forward, smiling. "Abracadabra," she whispered, as Agent Siskel quickly stood up and raced out of the room, a confused Agent Tropper following on her heels, as Claire lost it and started laughing hysterically. *** Allie and Molly were driving home. Allie didn't want to think about Sunny being in the back of the truck, she just wanted to get home and get rid of him. Molly, almost as if feeling the unease that was suffocating them, sat in total silence as Allie unsuccessfully searched for a radio station, only to get static after static channel. "Must be too far from the stations," Molly said quietly. "Do you wanna get something to eat?" Allie asked, "I...I need to eat." "I could eat," Molly said, "all I've done is full up on gas station jerky, so." "...I didn't think I'd feel like this. Feel this...bad, you know?" Allie asked, "I think I feel guilty not because I did it, but because he...he wasn't a bad person, and that's what hurts the most. If he'd been an asshole, this all would've been so much easier to defend. But aside from potentially trying to get Zoe hooked, because he was a business man and that's what they do, he wasn't a bad guy. We hung out here and there, he was almost a friend. I just...seeing the tomb again after all this time, it made me wanna vomit." "Well there goes my appetite," Molly mumbled, making Allie chuckle softly. "Sorry," Allie said, "it's just all so fucked up. I did what I did to protect Zoe. I didn't know what it would lead to. I just knew that I had to do something to protect her. Look at what happened to me, look at what show business does to a person. She doesn't deserve that. She deserves to be successful, happy, healthy. She's a better person than me." Molly watched Allie for a moment as she wiped her eyes on her sweatshirt sleeve. "...I don't think you're a bad person either, Allie," Molly finally said, "I think you were backed into a corner, and you did what you had to." "Thanks," Allie said, smiling weakly, "I appreciate that." They didn't talk again until they were in the diner booth, ordering. *** Agent Siskel pulled up into the parking lot violently, quickly unlatching her seatbelt and climbing out of her car, Agent Tropper right behind her from the passenger side. He was shouting at her, but she didn't take a second to hear him or wait. She barreled right through the doors, only to see Rachel St Sebastian filling out some paperwork at her desk. She looked up when the agents entered, and adjusted her reading glasses. "Hello," she said calmly. "Where is he?" Agent Siskel asked. "...I have some unfortunate news," Rachel said, cupping her hands, "We had a robbery this morning." Agent Siskel screamed, yanking at her hair as she walked into the coffin showroom, leaning against a nice coffin and crying. All the work, all the effort, and it'd all been undone in a matter of seconds. She couldn't help herself, she was sobbing. She felt a hand on her back and heard Agent Tropper talking to her as he stood beside her, rubbing her shoulder. "We'll get back on track, alright? We'll make it work," he said, "It's okay, it's just a small setback." "I was so close, Roger, I was so fucking close," Agent Siskel said, "I was...I was there. I had it. I had it all figured out, locked in, dead to rights. It was over, and she took it from me. That fucking woman, I'm going to kill her, I'm going to do to her what she did to all those people and shove her corpse in a wall." "Well, that's a little ridiculous," Agent Tropper said, "I understand you're upset, but we'll get it back, alright? Let's just focus." She wouldn't listen, she couldn't. She just needed to mourn for a moment. Agent Tropper just stayed there, rubbing her back. "It's fine," he said softly, "Take as long as you need. It's okay." And she would. Rebecca Siskel had always made a promise to herself, so as not to lose herself in her emotions in regards to her work. She'd let herself be mad or upset, she'd let herself feel for a bit, and then she'd get back to work and she'd solve the case, just like always. She couldn't ignore her disappointment, she knew that was outright unhealthy, but she also knew she couldn't allow herself to wallow in it either, as they got her nowhere. After a bit, she'd regain her composure, she'd get back to work, and she'd do whatever it took to catch Allie Meers. No matter what.
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ABOUT
Allie Meers is what she dreamed of being since she was a little girl...a successful Vegas magician. The only problem now is she can't make all her problems disappear; Allie grapples with her strained relationship, crippling addictions and FBI agents on her tail, all while trying to stay at the top of her career. Archives
December 2023
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