Numb3rs s05e06 Episode Script
Magic Show
.
??? @@@ ### Riotous cacophony to accompany Talma into our next phenomenon.
Prepare to be amazed and mystified by the ultimate feat of transfiguration! Now, I ask for only one thing.
Your silence.
Pay very close attention.
That's good.
Watch closely and learn why we call this Aquarius.
Ladies and gentlemen, I now give you, like the mermaids of legend, Talma! Is she supposed to be in there? Uh, yeah, looks like it.
Again, I give you Talma! Poor girl.
I'm sorry.
I heard they're supposed to be pretty good, but Uh, not Ladies and Gentlemen, I, uh Close it.
Close it now! I don't think this is part of the show.
No.
Will someone call 911? Excuse me for a minute, okay? Yeah.
Oh, come on, Charlie, I can't believe this.
Celtic green in my house! Those were the stakes, my friend.
I'm sorry.
The Lakers lost the Finals.
No, no.
You will wear it.
You're just not into b-ball, huh? I'm wearing it.
I'm wearing it.
Uh, you see how it brings out the worst in otherwise reasonable people? Larry, when you were in that monastery, you think you figured anything out? I remind you, I was thrown out of that monastery.
But what do you mean, figured things out? Like, in terms of what? I went to this temple the other night.
Really? Yeah.
And, uh, I hadn't been in one since my mother's funeral.
Before that, I- I was probably 13.
That is quite a span.
So, what brought you back? Well So it goes.
Yeah, David.
What's up? I thought you were on a date.
Yeah, I'm on my way.
Got to go to the Tower of Mystery.
Tower of Mystery.
Tower of Mystery? One of those LA landmarks I've always wanted to see.
I got a magician who disappeared.
Magician who disappeared? Isn't that what's supposed to happen? Two magicians were on the stage.
One does patter, other one does a trick.
Talma, no last name- she was in that thing right there, flowers swirling around her, then poof, she's gone, and it's filled with water.
That's a good trick, I guess.
That's what I thought, but according to her partner, The Amazing Susanna, aka Susie Weisz, Talma's not supposed to disappear.
She's supposed to stay in that thing, Aquarius, swimming around in the water.
She's never supposed to leave the cylinder.
She stays in there for the entire trick, but she just disappeared.
A woman transposed from air to water, back to the beginning of life.
Can we please go home now? Talma is hiding under the stage.
No, she's not hiding under the stage.
You really want to follow thugh with this hoax? 'Cause, I tell you, I've learned from personal experience- you don't mess with the FBI.
I'm not sure I know what you're talking about.
The cylinder looks complete, but the stage is actually seven inches deeper than the proscenium indicates.
Well, yeah, but that has nothing to do with the trick.
Seven inches is plenty deep for Talma to disappear under the stage.
No, you don't understand.
We have rehearsed this hundreds of times, and she has always been in there.
Open the trap door, please.
What trap door? Hey, if there's a door there, buddy, you better open it.
Hey, she may pay you.
Does she pay you enough to go to jail for filing a false FBI report? Open the door! Okay.
Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present to you the vanished Talma? Tell me that blood is part of the trick.
Êý×Ö×·Ð× µÚÎå¼¾ µÚ6¼¯ ʱ¼äÖ᣺¬ ±ó&²ËÖí Our techs put it between one and two liters of blood in that box, so something bad happened down there.
I mean, we're sure she was in here? No one saw her, but our lab results will tell us something.
All right, let's havit.
Where is she? I don't know.
You already lied to the FBI, okay? You told us that Talma wasn't supposed to leave Aquarius.
Then we got the trap door.
You want to go for strike three now? I think I should talk to my lawyer.
Oh, yeah.
Forgot about my date, Sarah.
I'll be right back, all right? The blood could be a prop, could be part of the act, you know? Spray some blood on the walls, vanish, voila, you got a great trick.
So a hoax? It's easy enough to figure out.
We'll use an application of blood spatter trigonometry to study the correlation between this blood and then Talma's probable position in the box.
Sounds like a place to start.
Now, I would assume, these pipes are for the pumping of the water.
Yeah, and I'm thinking these angled air movers in the corners get the air swirling.
Oh, dear.
I'm gonna get some latex gloves.
Professor Charles Eppes? I'm, uh, Penn llette.
Penn and Teller? I'm a big fan.
You are? Yeah.
I've read everything you've written.
I even read your book.
Not as good as the original paper, but, uh Oh.
I was upstairs prepping a special and heard you were down here.
Man, it is so great to meet you in person.
Well, you know, uh, actually, I'm a big fan of yours, as well.
Really? Cool.
Yeah, you work with the other guy, right? Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
I like the white tigers.
I could never get Feynman to go to Vegas, either.
You knew Feynman? Really easy guy to fool, and loved every minute of it.
All right.
It was a great pleasure meeting you.
I've got to get back to work.
Of course.
Uh, I'd love to talk to you about your paper about Infinite Series Cognitive Dissonance Leading to Semantic Contamination.
That's not my paper.
White tigers.
All right.
I heard about Talma.
If you need any help, well, I know a little bit about magic.
Thank you, Mr.
Jillette.
Sarah?! Excuse me.
Sorry about that.
Got to It's okay.
I get it.
Job comes first.
I'll make it up to you, okay? Maybe You seem like a good guy.
Maybe under different circumstances.
Let me call you a cab.
Too late.
Excuse me, Agent? Is the FBI involved in the case of a missing woman? Is it true that a large amount of blood was found at the scene? I'm sorry.
No comment.
We're in the middle of an ongoing investigation.
All right? So, you guys excuse me.
Tha you.
Excuse Move.
What we do know right now is that a magician is missing And Talma No-Last-Name started disappearing before last night.
DMV comes up empty, no medical records.
So, I guess we can forget about a blood match, huh? What else did you get? Our lady Copperfields have a history of fake emergencies.
They do this buried alive illusion.
As they piled the dirt on, Talma's casket collapses.
It takes emergency crews to dig up an empty coffin.
Three months later, Fairbanks, Alaska- same deal with an escape from a fire that failed.
And let me guess.
Both times Talma miraculously reappeared unharmed? Uh-huh.
They paid 50 grand in fines, sold 250 grand in tickets.
That box looks secure from the inside.
That's what I'm thinking, too.
There's no way she got out of that without help.
And her partner was on stage the whole time.
Oh, of course.
That's what magicians do.
You know, make it look like they're here when they're not, right? I saw a special where one guy made a limo disappear.
Turns out, it was 14 guys, a mirror and three pieces of plywood painted asphalt black.
Yeah.
Well, I'm working on a list of people they've both worked with.
Figure, maybe one of them will pop.
Yeah, for a crime we're not even sure happened, my head hurts.
WOMAN Is it true that a large amount of blood was found at the scene? Uh, no comnt.
Uh, sorry.
We're in the middle of an ongoing investigation.
Ah, Agent Harry Potter, first on the scene.
WOMAN Well, what we do know right now is that If I had taken her anywhere else, man, a movie, anything, there'd be another date.
Stop bitching.
Give her a call.
Right, you're a big TV star now.
She's gonna love that.
So, of course, now I got the assistant director on my ass about why one of our agents has dragged us into a case that's gonna make us look like idiots.
Don, I'm sorry.
She We got to find the girl now, all right? You ever get the feeling you're searching for an answer you already have? Well, so much for an unbiased search for the truth.
Is Charlie still determined to predetermine the results? That's not fair.
I think you're cherry-picking the data to give you the answer you expect.
You pick the next batch.
Who doesn't like magic? Top hat and tails and pulling bunnies out of thin air.
It's Elvis on black velvet.
Well, I love the feeling of a live audience, swept up in the suspense of the show, trying to figure out the trick, looking for the mirrors.
Yes, and just a little relieved when you don't see them.
I'll show you the mirrors.
Oh, no, you don't, Dr.
Eppes.
I won't let you ruin this for me, too.
So, the serology report on the blood found at the scene verifies that it is human, O positive.
There's Barr bodies in the cell structure and the Kell antigen, which indicates that it's a white female.
And the DNA in the hair sample that we picked up in her dressing room does match the DNA in the blood, so very good chance it was Talma in that box.
All right, so let's say it's not a hoax.
Let's say it's real- who'd want to hurt Talma? The partner? Susie Weisz, a known box jumper, the beautiful assistant, but not a real magician until she she started working with Talma.
Talma's good-looking, from all accounts, the more talented magician.
Why would she switch places, basically taking the assistant's job and put herself in the cylinder? Who knows? The fact still remains that Talma was the big draw, right, so I doubt the Amazing Susanna would do anything to try to harm her meal ticket.
I've been running down some more of the names of the people that perform with them- nobody's talking.
I mean, it seems like the world of magic is all about keeping a secret.
I still say this is just one more stunt.
You know, fake a felony, get on the news, get famous.
So, what's the blood supposed to mean? Well, there's what it usually means.
So, blood spatter trigonometry suggests the spatter is real.
Uh, it came from a body being torn by a sharp force trauma.
So, you know what happened inside the box? We weren't trying to reconstruct the actual event.
We were looking to validate or rather invalidate the blood spatter.
It's like when you walk outside and you notice that the ground is wet.
The question is: Did it rain or is the water coming from somewhere else? A droplet of water falling in a vertical line from a cloud will slam to the ground and splash outward.
Water from a garden hose will have an entirely different mathematical signature.
Different vectors, velocity, a far more obtuse angle.
So, we compare the rain triangle to the garden hose triangle to tell us if it rained or if your neighbor just recently washed his car.
Now, we were able to analyze the pattern of the blood droplets, as well as the angle and velocity of the impact to determine with fairly high probability that Talma did suffer a real injury.
Now, whether it was an accident or the result of some sort of struggle, I'm not sure.
I would love to consult with an expert who might be able to tell me which it was.
Yeah, sure, go for it.
Hey, what happened with your, uh, date? Did you call her? Yeah, she's not answering.
Go bring her some flowers or something- we'll be all right for an hour.
Hi, uh, I'm David.
I'm I'm looking for Sarah.
Sarah? This is, uh, 1F, right? I I picked her up here last night.
We just got back today.
I'm sorry to bother you, ma'am.
Is it is it possible maybe, uh, Sarah is staying here? Long hair, African-American? We have lived here for 33 years.
??? ñ| Whose idea was it to goto this magic show? Hers.
And you met her at the Howling Dog, right? That's a known cop bar.
A set-up from the start.
A couple of magicians want to amp up the disappearance of their main act, what better way than to get FBI in on a missing persons investigation? Yeah, I hope she was hot.
Hey, don't feel so bad, big guy.
You know, I'm thinking a night out, no matter what, sounds pretty good.
And I don't care what that blood says, I say we're being played.
Yeah, time to talk to the Amazing Susna again.
You've made a career of demystification.
But we weren't the first.
Houdini dedicated his life to revealing these charlatans that defraud the human race with their lies, the talking to the dead, the psychics.
Yes, well, the blood spatter was not faked.
The FBI suspects that there was a third party involved in Talma's disappearance.
An illusion this complicated, she would have needed the help of an artisan.
An artisan? Yeah, the people who actually build and design the tricks.
Angel has, like, working for him.
You know, we'd both love to see these blueprints.
Good luck.
A trick like Aquarius is worth millions to the guy who creates it.
Once these women do it, it becomes public domain- within a year, you got their versions.
The Swimming Pool, the Water Cube, the Shark Tank.
Let me show you this thing.
This was a feature trick Done on TV and everything.
Now you can buy it at any toy store.
That's the way things work in this business.
Neat trick, huh? Hydrophobic sand.
You do know your magic.
I know my science.
It's gonna be hard to find this engineer.
No one will reveal who the artisans are, especially not the artisans.
Henning had to deposit money in an untraceable bank account to look at some blueprints.
Maybe we don't need to know.
Maybe we can reverse engineer the trick on our own and find out who built it.
Study the architecture to find the architect.
You do know your science.
Well, no.
I know my magic.
It wasn't supposed to be like this.
I mean, yes, we made you part of the show.
I mean, an FBI agent involved it adds to the hype, but that blood was not part of the illusion.
So what is the trick? I mean, uh how does Aquarius work? Well, I I don't know.
I mean, that's Talma's thing.
I do patter, exhibition.
Misdirection.
Well yeah.
I'm gonna need the name- the real name- of my date.
Well, I I have no idea.
Talma set it up.
She just told me to expect a cop and to keep him occupied and away from the box.
When that math guy opened it, I expected her to be in there.
That was how we rehearsed it every time.
So, she doesn't tell you how the trick works.
All right, she lies to you about the endgame, then she puts you in the middle of an FBI investigation? She used me.
She didn't get out of that box by herself, so who besides yourself would help her? Garland Saint Michael.
Formerly the Miraculous Michael.
You know your magic.
He's on our list of Talma's past collaborators.
He and Talma were hot and heavy before he got all mystic-purist.
Uh, he's the guy who hung himself from flesh hooks for 24 hours on live TV.
And that's magic? He thinks so.
I'll spend six days in my Dream Cocoon.
Total sensory deprivation.
Do you wish to lay in it? No, thanks.
On the seventh day, I'll emerge, an altered state of consciousness, unable to take even the slightest sound or color for granted.
Yeah, I bet you'll be hungry, too.
Talma and I remain close, and I wish her all success.
We differ in tone, but unite in passion.
You do realize she's missing.
Is she? Where were you last night? Las Vegas.
Drove in this morning.
I'm sure Caesar's has security footage of me preparing for my next piece.
Do you know where she is, what she's planning? We haven't even spoken for months.
But I'm not surprised she went with the classic- the Vanishing Lady.
That's really the core of our differences.
Magic isn't magic until it elevates the human spirit.
Talma is stagnating, attempting to make art from rubbish.
Is that why she let Susie Weisz play the part of the magician? Talma needs to be in the middle of the action.
Touching the trick, really feeling it.
Oh, on that much we agree.
We found a liter of blood at the scene.
She's a genius.
No matter how mundane, Talma would literally bleed for a trick.
I have faith that when she reveals herself to the world, it's going to be beautiful.
Let's consider the Gliederpuppe.
David said the cylinder was empty.
Then, the lights went out for a few seconds.
Then, the cylinder was filled.
Well, let's be conservative here.
How about five seconds? That's a long time for the audience to be sitting in the dark.
Let's say 3.
5.
Coming up through the floor, fighting gravity, the water pressure required to fill that cylinder in such a short time The pressure on the human body would be enormous.
That makes Talma one tough lady.
It's an amazing feat, really.
I mean, it's almost like her response to the misogyny of cutting a woman in half.
She's created this this mechanical paean to the beauty of womankind.
She reverse evolves the female, surrounded by flowers, then she drops her right back into the elegance of the ocean where all life began.
It's almost like Venus returning to her clamshell.
You really see all that? You really don't? All I see is pipes and air movers and flowers and fish being pumped in and sucked out.
Why can't you accept magic as an art? Why allow yourself to be pummeled by water pressure every night.
Isn't there an Occam's razor here? I mean, you said yourself, the solutions to magic tricks are often underwhelming and simple.
Why do the "reverse evolution?" Why water coming in every night? Uh-huh.
You see these and these? Well, isn't that just where the glass connects to the decoration on the outside? I think Larry's half right.
Thissn't a reverse evolution trick.
This is a woman coming out of the water.
And into the air.
She flies? She flies.
The micro thin flying wires for the harness enter through the cylinder here and here.
It's unseen by the audience.
She looks like she's flying in a fully-encased cylinder.
David didn't say anything about flying.
And we didn't find a rig in the rafters at the Tower of Mystery because that wasn't part of the trick that night.
There's a second part to the trick? Ah, but of course.
The stunning conclusion.
The vanished woman reappears, in the glory of flight.
We need to flip this trick, make it work backwards.
Yeah, reverse the reverse engineering.
Worst ways to spend a night.
I'll go put a kettle on.
Hey.
Late supper? On a little break.
Lost in contemplation? Yeah.
You know, when last we spoke, you were asking me about religion.
Right.
Well, at the very basic level, cosmological quantum physics suggests that if this universe here is as real as we believe that it is, it must have been cast into reality by an external observer.
God? And yet paradoxically, how can there be anything external in an all-inclusive universe? Uh-huh.
So, you see? My own quest for God has always been inextricably intertwined with my work.
Does that help you sleep? No.
It keeps me awake.
All right, so, what's the point? The point is to keep looking for the point.
That's what the Rabbi said.
Rabbi? Yeah.
Rabbi.
Well I will rejoin Charlie and Amita.
Oh, and I should do that, too.
Tough to track a woman without an identity, but I found Talma's corporation.
Two weeks ago, Aquarius Specialties Limited rented trucks to load in at the Tower of Mystery.
Now, where'd the trucks pick up from? Movers said that they picked up two big crates in the middle of an abandoned parking lot.
Paranoid magicians.
Yeah, hoax the FBI- I'd hide my prep, too.
Aquarius Specialties Limited also rented a storefront on Hollywood Boulevard.
It's a high traffic area, lots of tourists, entertainment seekers.
Charlie thinks there's gonna be a part two to Talma's trick Which is why I checked into the party rental agencies in the area.
Two of them have been contracted to deliver folding chairs, tents and big screen TV's to the same location.
Come on.
"Hollywood Brasserie"? Talma loves her misdirection.
Oh, come on, now, does it really need to be this dark? You scared, Granger? Nah.
Pitch-black was top of my class in "Pitchblack Assaults on Magical Illusions" back in Quantico.
Let's see.
Lights.
?? Murder? Well, ME's initial report is inconclusive.
Talma drowned, but she has a contusion on the side of her head, too.
She also had a laceration on her right leg, pretty deep.
That explains the blood we found at the Tower of Mystery.
However she got cut, accidental or otherwise, the wound was bandaged, trace amounts of blood in the water.
She didn't bleed to death.
According to Charlie's analysis, this was the master fail-safe- it's a handle that would release the water.
Now it was broken off and wiped clean of prints, so, definitely somebody was here.
Hairline fracture in the glass could match the contusion on her head.
Yeah, I'm thinking maybe there was a struggle, and she got knocked out against the glass.
Yeah, then the killer dumped her, unconscious, in the water to drown.
All right, so they broke the handle- that's master fail-safe, so the internal ones wouldn't work.
It still doesn't answer one big question.
Who'd want to kill her? Why can't they just build a normal machine, with everything laid out in an orderly fashion? Function fit to form.
The magic design for the magic machine.
Let's take a break from the flying part.
You know, it's like a jigsaw puzzle.
You put together the frame pieces before trying to work the more difficult middle section.
You know she's right.
If we could just get a handle on the cylinder, we could figure out how much tensile strength is needed for these flying wires and how much for the common joints between the glass and filigree.
Uh, the glass.
That's simple.
Yeah.
The first question.
How much water can it handle? Well, witnesses from the performance report that it was full.
Talkin' 50 cubic feet of water.
Water weight 3,300 pounds.
A little over one a half tons.
Wow.
That amount of water withstanding that kind of pressure.
You're not gonna find that kind of glass at Home Depot.
There are two factories that produce the quality of glass that Charlie says is required to create the cylinder.
Asahi Glass in Tokyo and Undverglasen in Garmisch, Germany.
Undverglasen shipped four tons of multi-ply tempered-curved glass to a Burbank warehouse last year.
Well, before she hit the fast track with Susie Weisz, she bounced around for about five years.
Why's that? Maybe because her previous boss drowned while was on stage.
Who's the girl in the middle? That's Drowndini's assistant.
That could be a lead.
Sister blames Talma for her brother's death.
Yeah, same MO, drowning, could fit for revenge.
That's my date.
Sarah.
Her real name is Jenny Calandro.
Can't believe your search led you to the doorstep of Gage Jones.
Impressive, Dr.
Eppes.
Uh, guy's one of the legendary Artisans of the magic world.
Of course, last I knew, he was, uh, working in an abandoned ferry on Fidalgo Island in Washington.
Is all right that we just let ourselves in like this? Oh, I called ahead.
Uh, magic awaits.
Professor Fleinhardt, if you would, please.
My pleasure.
Around here.
The guillotine! It's a far better thing I do, than I have ever done.
The blade folds up into the trick.
Shh! It's angles.
It's all angles.
That's all I'm saying.
Okay, let's, uh, show you another one.
How about the Kafka box? Are you ready to metamorphosize? Into what, a cockroach? So this one is a false back.
He's still inside the box.
Okay, that's pretty cool.
He climbs in, Penn spins the box, engages the catch, the catch releases two mirrors.
The mirrors fold out at 45 degree angles.
You think you're looking at the back of the box, it's really just reflections.
Hey, quiet you.
Mr.
Jillette.
Three guests.
From the FBI.
You're here because of the lovely and talented Miss Talma, I take it.
Well, may be a wasted trip, she's not here.
But she'll turn up in due time at a place of her choosing, for the best possible impact.
I hate to break it to you, she already turned up.
Oh, was it wondrous? She was dead.
Real dead.
But I just saw her.
I mean I built Aquarius.
She was found in the second part of the trick on Hollywood Boulevard.
She drowned inside.
No, couldn't have drowned.
We had too many fail-safes built in.
There was a handle on the outside that was broken off by someone else.
You know a, a girl, a former assistant- Jenny Calandro? Yeah, I know Jenny.
Talma brought her around a couple times to look at Aquarius.
You got an address? We think it may not have been an accident.
You're damn right it wasn't an accident.
If Talma's dead, she was murdered.
Hello.
Hi.
Oh, hey.
What's on? Baseball, basketball, football, hockey.
Take your pick.
What, you got to ask? Hockey.
That's right So what is, uh, what is all this about you, uh, going to temple? I went once.
Yeah, and? Thinking I might take a class or two.
You know, I'd be more than happy to talk to you about it.
I mean, I've been to Hebrew school.
I know all the prayers.
Thanks.
We'll see how it goes.
I think I'm okay for now.
Right.
Hockey.
I know I'm still new and all, but is this status quo for you guys? What's that? Stalking girls on company time.
My date's home.
Jenny.
You've got to be kidding me.
You do have a way with the ladies.
You are not playing chicken with the FBI.
Yeah, she is pretty.
??I swear.
You blamed her for your brother's death.
You wanted revenge.
Anthony was reckless.
He didn't check his gear, his machines.
He thought that if they worked once, they always worked.
That's what killed him, and I knew that.
Oh, so it was a coincidence that you were at the show the night that Talma disappeared? I mean, the night she was murdered.
Talma dealt with my brother's death differently.
I moved on.
She made it her life's work to court death.
I brought you to the show, because an old friend asked me to.
I was her assistant, nothing more.
You helped her out of that box? As soon as you left, I went under the stage, removed the hatch.
Talma was covered in her own blood.
When she fell through the trap door, she hit a metal strut, tore her leg open.
No, we never found a bloody strut.
She took it, said it added to the mystery.
Look, I wanted to take her to the hospital, but she insisted she was fine.
We bandaged the leg, I helped her to her car and she drove off on her own.
Where'd she go? To Hollywood.
To make sure the second Aquarius was working properly.
I told you, she learned from what happened to my brother.
My job was to get back to you.
You were just supposed to be some cop.
I could have gone up to any guy in that bar.
But I was selfish.
I went up to the right one.
Best sucker in the house.
Not what I meant.
She lying? I doubt it.
But, hey, I'm the last guy you should ask, right? What are you talking about? You're the only one I can ask.
Don, send somebody else in there to talk to her.
Well, either she's very good, or she does like you.
I believe she knew Talma.
I believe she was working with Talma that night.
And I believe there's much better ways to get payback than to sucker an FBI agent into watching you kill your target.
Yeah, I agree with you.
So what do we do with her? She committed a crime, and she ran.
You make the call.
How much have they dismantled? Apparently, the veneer was taken down, but the guts remain.
The guts, which are usually under the stage and lead to a panel offstage where the technician calls the shots.
These must be the fail-safe dials.
Check the glass.
All right, looks like there are two switches hidden inside the cylinder: one high and one low.
Water release valves.
The techs indicate they've not been touched.
It's a good gument for Talma being unconscious.
She couldn't trip the fail-safes.
One, two, three input pipes.
Reconstruction of the apparatus indicates there should be at least four.
Should be six if they were playing it safe.
So to fill this cylinder with three pipes in five seconds Or less.
would require higher water pressure than we'd anticipated, extremely high water pressure.
Where does that leave us? All right, hey.
We don't think Talma was murdered.
No, our findings suggest that higher than intended pressure was ultimately responsible for Talma's death.
So this is all an accident? The flaw was in the machine.
Well, how can you figure that out if you never even saw the trick being performed? We used Design Recovery.
It was originally implemented to handle secretive computer software systems hidden within coding: illusions, ghosts in the machine.
To a first-time viewer, a staple jt looks like a tiny piece of metal holding your papers together.
But pry it loose and study its dimensions, how it bends, you realize at some point it changed shape to achieve its goal.
Put it under a microscope and you see telltale signs it was attached to others of its kind.
Without seeing the staple's origin, we reverse engineer the unseen machine that put our tiny little piece of metal to work.
Most likely, Talma climbed in, and then someone else started Aquarius.
However, the water filled up too quickly.
She slammed her head against the glass on the inside.
Added to the blood loss, it knocked her unconscious.
Which is why she never engaged any of the security devices inside the machine.
Yeah, it doesn't explain the handle, the fracture, the other person, why they didn't let her out We think they tried.
They pulled the handle, but that failed.
Yeah, they tried another way: brute force.
We found this fracture in the exact structurally weakest place.
It wasn't Talma's head that cracked the glass, it was probably somebody with a sledgehammer.
So all the signs of attempted murder were actually evidence that someone tried to save her.
Yeah, and there was only one person, other than Talma, that had inside knowledge about this trick: the man who built it.
Magicians have something against track lighting or what? This place is a lot less threatening during the day, trust me.
Jones? Don't make us have to come get you! NIKKI I think we got him.
What's the matter, there was no bed to hide under? Got him.
Tried so hard to get her out.
You got to believe me.
An artisan's worst nightmare is to have a trick go wrong.
You gave us Jenny Calandro, knowing she was innocent.
Why didn't you tell us before? I wanted to, it's just she was out cold, laying there as the water killed her.
The fail-safes We know.
Her chest stopped moving.
I was inches away from her when she died.
It was an accident.
All you had to do was come forward.
Oh, and watch my entire career, my greatest invention, die with her? Nobody buys illusions that kill you for real.
So, hmm, how was that? Well to be honest, Mom's was better.
Oh, come on.
It's the same recipe.
I'm just saying.
That's all, I'm just saying.
Hey, listen, Donny, um do you feel like I cheated you out something? We were never a religious family.
It's not about that.
I just I always used to know exactly what I was doing, why I was doing it, you know, what I wanted and I just I feel like I'm missing something.
So, you, um you think, uh, you'll find it by going to temple? I don't know.
I just know where it's not.
You know, it's not in the job.
I know, but I I never taught you about, you know, God and or gave you that choice.
No, you did.
You know, look where I'm looking for it.
Right.
So, um that's it? That's all I got.
I cooked, you do the dishes.
Don't look at your phone as if it's gonna ring and save you.
Just do the dishes.
This is hardly a romantic spot.
It's not a romantic spot.
It's a learning spot.
Help me with this.
Amita? I want to show you what I see in magic.
Uh, I see a harness.
Yes.
go over there to the switchboard.
Flip switch seven.
Uh, hey, are we sure this is safe? Well, we know the design better than anybody.
Eight.
Nine.
Ten.
Do you see it yet?
??? @@@ ### Riotous cacophony to accompany Talma into our next phenomenon.
Prepare to be amazed and mystified by the ultimate feat of transfiguration! Now, I ask for only one thing.
Your silence.
Pay very close attention.
That's good.
Watch closely and learn why we call this Aquarius.
Ladies and gentlemen, I now give you, like the mermaids of legend, Talma! Is she supposed to be in there? Uh, yeah, looks like it.
Again, I give you Talma! Poor girl.
I'm sorry.
I heard they're supposed to be pretty good, but Uh, not Ladies and Gentlemen, I, uh Close it.
Close it now! I don't think this is part of the show.
No.
Will someone call 911? Excuse me for a minute, okay? Yeah.
Oh, come on, Charlie, I can't believe this.
Celtic green in my house! Those were the stakes, my friend.
I'm sorry.
The Lakers lost the Finals.
No, no.
You will wear it.
You're just not into b-ball, huh? I'm wearing it.
I'm wearing it.
Uh, you see how it brings out the worst in otherwise reasonable people? Larry, when you were in that monastery, you think you figured anything out? I remind you, I was thrown out of that monastery.
But what do you mean, figured things out? Like, in terms of what? I went to this temple the other night.
Really? Yeah.
And, uh, I hadn't been in one since my mother's funeral.
Before that, I- I was probably 13.
That is quite a span.
So, what brought you back? Well So it goes.
Yeah, David.
What's up? I thought you were on a date.
Yeah, I'm on my way.
Got to go to the Tower of Mystery.
Tower of Mystery.
Tower of Mystery? One of those LA landmarks I've always wanted to see.
I got a magician who disappeared.
Magician who disappeared? Isn't that what's supposed to happen? Two magicians were on the stage.
One does patter, other one does a trick.
Talma, no last name- she was in that thing right there, flowers swirling around her, then poof, she's gone, and it's filled with water.
That's a good trick, I guess.
That's what I thought, but according to her partner, The Amazing Susanna, aka Susie Weisz, Talma's not supposed to disappear.
She's supposed to stay in that thing, Aquarius, swimming around in the water.
She's never supposed to leave the cylinder.
She stays in there for the entire trick, but she just disappeared.
A woman transposed from air to water, back to the beginning of life.
Can we please go home now? Talma is hiding under the stage.
No, she's not hiding under the stage.
You really want to follow thugh with this hoax? 'Cause, I tell you, I've learned from personal experience- you don't mess with the FBI.
I'm not sure I know what you're talking about.
The cylinder looks complete, but the stage is actually seven inches deeper than the proscenium indicates.
Well, yeah, but that has nothing to do with the trick.
Seven inches is plenty deep for Talma to disappear under the stage.
No, you don't understand.
We have rehearsed this hundreds of times, and she has always been in there.
Open the trap door, please.
What trap door? Hey, if there's a door there, buddy, you better open it.
Hey, she may pay you.
Does she pay you enough to go to jail for filing a false FBI report? Open the door! Okay.
Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present to you the vanished Talma? Tell me that blood is part of the trick.
Êý×Ö×·Ð× µÚÎå¼¾ µÚ6¼¯ ʱ¼äÖ᣺¬ ±ó&²ËÖí Our techs put it between one and two liters of blood in that box, so something bad happened down there.
I mean, we're sure she was in here? No one saw her, but our lab results will tell us something.
All right, let's havit.
Where is she? I don't know.
You already lied to the FBI, okay? You told us that Talma wasn't supposed to leave Aquarius.
Then we got the trap door.
You want to go for strike three now? I think I should talk to my lawyer.
Oh, yeah.
Forgot about my date, Sarah.
I'll be right back, all right? The blood could be a prop, could be part of the act, you know? Spray some blood on the walls, vanish, voila, you got a great trick.
So a hoax? It's easy enough to figure out.
We'll use an application of blood spatter trigonometry to study the correlation between this blood and then Talma's probable position in the box.
Sounds like a place to start.
Now, I would assume, these pipes are for the pumping of the water.
Yeah, and I'm thinking these angled air movers in the corners get the air swirling.
Oh, dear.
I'm gonna get some latex gloves.
Professor Charles Eppes? I'm, uh, Penn llette.
Penn and Teller? I'm a big fan.
You are? Yeah.
I've read everything you've written.
I even read your book.
Not as good as the original paper, but, uh Oh.
I was upstairs prepping a special and heard you were down here.
Man, it is so great to meet you in person.
Well, you know, uh, actually, I'm a big fan of yours, as well.
Really? Cool.
Yeah, you work with the other guy, right? Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
I like the white tigers.
I could never get Feynman to go to Vegas, either.
You knew Feynman? Really easy guy to fool, and loved every minute of it.
All right.
It was a great pleasure meeting you.
I've got to get back to work.
Of course.
Uh, I'd love to talk to you about your paper about Infinite Series Cognitive Dissonance Leading to Semantic Contamination.
That's not my paper.
White tigers.
All right.
I heard about Talma.
If you need any help, well, I know a little bit about magic.
Thank you, Mr.
Jillette.
Sarah?! Excuse me.
Sorry about that.
Got to It's okay.
I get it.
Job comes first.
I'll make it up to you, okay? Maybe You seem like a good guy.
Maybe under different circumstances.
Let me call you a cab.
Too late.
Excuse me, Agent? Is the FBI involved in the case of a missing woman? Is it true that a large amount of blood was found at the scene? I'm sorry.
No comment.
We're in the middle of an ongoing investigation.
All right? So, you guys excuse me.
Tha you.
Excuse Move.
What we do know right now is that a magician is missing And Talma No-Last-Name started disappearing before last night.
DMV comes up empty, no medical records.
So, I guess we can forget about a blood match, huh? What else did you get? Our lady Copperfields have a history of fake emergencies.
They do this buried alive illusion.
As they piled the dirt on, Talma's casket collapses.
It takes emergency crews to dig up an empty coffin.
Three months later, Fairbanks, Alaska- same deal with an escape from a fire that failed.
And let me guess.
Both times Talma miraculously reappeared unharmed? Uh-huh.
They paid 50 grand in fines, sold 250 grand in tickets.
That box looks secure from the inside.
That's what I'm thinking, too.
There's no way she got out of that without help.
And her partner was on stage the whole time.
Oh, of course.
That's what magicians do.
You know, make it look like they're here when they're not, right? I saw a special where one guy made a limo disappear.
Turns out, it was 14 guys, a mirror and three pieces of plywood painted asphalt black.
Yeah.
Well, I'm working on a list of people they've both worked with.
Figure, maybe one of them will pop.
Yeah, for a crime we're not even sure happened, my head hurts.
WOMAN Is it true that a large amount of blood was found at the scene? Uh, no comnt.
Uh, sorry.
We're in the middle of an ongoing investigation.
Ah, Agent Harry Potter, first on the scene.
WOMAN Well, what we do know right now is that If I had taken her anywhere else, man, a movie, anything, there'd be another date.
Stop bitching.
Give her a call.
Right, you're a big TV star now.
She's gonna love that.
So, of course, now I got the assistant director on my ass about why one of our agents has dragged us into a case that's gonna make us look like idiots.
Don, I'm sorry.
She We got to find the girl now, all right? You ever get the feeling you're searching for an answer you already have? Well, so much for an unbiased search for the truth.
Is Charlie still determined to predetermine the results? That's not fair.
I think you're cherry-picking the data to give you the answer you expect.
You pick the next batch.
Who doesn't like magic? Top hat and tails and pulling bunnies out of thin air.
It's Elvis on black velvet.
Well, I love the feeling of a live audience, swept up in the suspense of the show, trying to figure out the trick, looking for the mirrors.
Yes, and just a little relieved when you don't see them.
I'll show you the mirrors.
Oh, no, you don't, Dr.
Eppes.
I won't let you ruin this for me, too.
So, the serology report on the blood found at the scene verifies that it is human, O positive.
There's Barr bodies in the cell structure and the Kell antigen, which indicates that it's a white female.
And the DNA in the hair sample that we picked up in her dressing room does match the DNA in the blood, so very good chance it was Talma in that box.
All right, so let's say it's not a hoax.
Let's say it's real- who'd want to hurt Talma? The partner? Susie Weisz, a known box jumper, the beautiful assistant, but not a real magician until she she started working with Talma.
Talma's good-looking, from all accounts, the more talented magician.
Why would she switch places, basically taking the assistant's job and put herself in the cylinder? Who knows? The fact still remains that Talma was the big draw, right, so I doubt the Amazing Susanna would do anything to try to harm her meal ticket.
I've been running down some more of the names of the people that perform with them- nobody's talking.
I mean, it seems like the world of magic is all about keeping a secret.
I still say this is just one more stunt.
You know, fake a felony, get on the news, get famous.
So, what's the blood supposed to mean? Well, there's what it usually means.
So, blood spatter trigonometry suggests the spatter is real.
Uh, it came from a body being torn by a sharp force trauma.
So, you know what happened inside the box? We weren't trying to reconstruct the actual event.
We were looking to validate or rather invalidate the blood spatter.
It's like when you walk outside and you notice that the ground is wet.
The question is: Did it rain or is the water coming from somewhere else? A droplet of water falling in a vertical line from a cloud will slam to the ground and splash outward.
Water from a garden hose will have an entirely different mathematical signature.
Different vectors, velocity, a far more obtuse angle.
So, we compare the rain triangle to the garden hose triangle to tell us if it rained or if your neighbor just recently washed his car.
Now, we were able to analyze the pattern of the blood droplets, as well as the angle and velocity of the impact to determine with fairly high probability that Talma did suffer a real injury.
Now, whether it was an accident or the result of some sort of struggle, I'm not sure.
I would love to consult with an expert who might be able to tell me which it was.
Yeah, sure, go for it.
Hey, what happened with your, uh, date? Did you call her? Yeah, she's not answering.
Go bring her some flowers or something- we'll be all right for an hour.
Hi, uh, I'm David.
I'm I'm looking for Sarah.
Sarah? This is, uh, 1F, right? I I picked her up here last night.
We just got back today.
I'm sorry to bother you, ma'am.
Is it is it possible maybe, uh, Sarah is staying here? Long hair, African-American? We have lived here for 33 years.
??? ñ| Whose idea was it to goto this magic show? Hers.
And you met her at the Howling Dog, right? That's a known cop bar.
A set-up from the start.
A couple of magicians want to amp up the disappearance of their main act, what better way than to get FBI in on a missing persons investigation? Yeah, I hope she was hot.
Hey, don't feel so bad, big guy.
You know, I'm thinking a night out, no matter what, sounds pretty good.
And I don't care what that blood says, I say we're being played.
Yeah, time to talk to the Amazing Susna again.
You've made a career of demystification.
But we weren't the first.
Houdini dedicated his life to revealing these charlatans that defraud the human race with their lies, the talking to the dead, the psychics.
Yes, well, the blood spatter was not faked.
The FBI suspects that there was a third party involved in Talma's disappearance.
An illusion this complicated, she would have needed the help of an artisan.
An artisan? Yeah, the people who actually build and design the tricks.
Angel has, like, working for him.
You know, we'd both love to see these blueprints.
Good luck.
A trick like Aquarius is worth millions to the guy who creates it.
Once these women do it, it becomes public domain- within a year, you got their versions.
The Swimming Pool, the Water Cube, the Shark Tank.
Let me show you this thing.
This was a feature trick Done on TV and everything.
Now you can buy it at any toy store.
That's the way things work in this business.
Neat trick, huh? Hydrophobic sand.
You do know your magic.
I know my science.
It's gonna be hard to find this engineer.
No one will reveal who the artisans are, especially not the artisans.
Henning had to deposit money in an untraceable bank account to look at some blueprints.
Maybe we don't need to know.
Maybe we can reverse engineer the trick on our own and find out who built it.
Study the architecture to find the architect.
You do know your science.
Well, no.
I know my magic.
It wasn't supposed to be like this.
I mean, yes, we made you part of the show.
I mean, an FBI agent involved it adds to the hype, but that blood was not part of the illusion.
So what is the trick? I mean, uh how does Aquarius work? Well, I I don't know.
I mean, that's Talma's thing.
I do patter, exhibition.
Misdirection.
Well yeah.
I'm gonna need the name- the real name- of my date.
Well, I I have no idea.
Talma set it up.
She just told me to expect a cop and to keep him occupied and away from the box.
When that math guy opened it, I expected her to be in there.
That was how we rehearsed it every time.
So, she doesn't tell you how the trick works.
All right, she lies to you about the endgame, then she puts you in the middle of an FBI investigation? She used me.
She didn't get out of that box by herself, so who besides yourself would help her? Garland Saint Michael.
Formerly the Miraculous Michael.
You know your magic.
He's on our list of Talma's past collaborators.
He and Talma were hot and heavy before he got all mystic-purist.
Uh, he's the guy who hung himself from flesh hooks for 24 hours on live TV.
And that's magic? He thinks so.
I'll spend six days in my Dream Cocoon.
Total sensory deprivation.
Do you wish to lay in it? No, thanks.
On the seventh day, I'll emerge, an altered state of consciousness, unable to take even the slightest sound or color for granted.
Yeah, I bet you'll be hungry, too.
Talma and I remain close, and I wish her all success.
We differ in tone, but unite in passion.
You do realize she's missing.
Is she? Where were you last night? Las Vegas.
Drove in this morning.
I'm sure Caesar's has security footage of me preparing for my next piece.
Do you know where she is, what she's planning? We haven't even spoken for months.
But I'm not surprised she went with the classic- the Vanishing Lady.
That's really the core of our differences.
Magic isn't magic until it elevates the human spirit.
Talma is stagnating, attempting to make art from rubbish.
Is that why she let Susie Weisz play the part of the magician? Talma needs to be in the middle of the action.
Touching the trick, really feeling it.
Oh, on that much we agree.
We found a liter of blood at the scene.
She's a genius.
No matter how mundane, Talma would literally bleed for a trick.
I have faith that when she reveals herself to the world, it's going to be beautiful.
Let's consider the Gliederpuppe.
David said the cylinder was empty.
Then, the lights went out for a few seconds.
Then, the cylinder was filled.
Well, let's be conservative here.
How about five seconds? That's a long time for the audience to be sitting in the dark.
Let's say 3.
5.
Coming up through the floor, fighting gravity, the water pressure required to fill that cylinder in such a short time The pressure on the human body would be enormous.
That makes Talma one tough lady.
It's an amazing feat, really.
I mean, it's almost like her response to the misogyny of cutting a woman in half.
She's created this this mechanical paean to the beauty of womankind.
She reverse evolves the female, surrounded by flowers, then she drops her right back into the elegance of the ocean where all life began.
It's almost like Venus returning to her clamshell.
You really see all that? You really don't? All I see is pipes and air movers and flowers and fish being pumped in and sucked out.
Why can't you accept magic as an art? Why allow yourself to be pummeled by water pressure every night.
Isn't there an Occam's razor here? I mean, you said yourself, the solutions to magic tricks are often underwhelming and simple.
Why do the "reverse evolution?" Why water coming in every night? Uh-huh.
You see these and these? Well, isn't that just where the glass connects to the decoration on the outside? I think Larry's half right.
Thissn't a reverse evolution trick.
This is a woman coming out of the water.
And into the air.
She flies? She flies.
The micro thin flying wires for the harness enter through the cylinder here and here.
It's unseen by the audience.
She looks like she's flying in a fully-encased cylinder.
David didn't say anything about flying.
And we didn't find a rig in the rafters at the Tower of Mystery because that wasn't part of the trick that night.
There's a second part to the trick? Ah, but of course.
The stunning conclusion.
The vanished woman reappears, in the glory of flight.
We need to flip this trick, make it work backwards.
Yeah, reverse the reverse engineering.
Worst ways to spend a night.
I'll go put a kettle on.
Hey.
Late supper? On a little break.
Lost in contemplation? Yeah.
You know, when last we spoke, you were asking me about religion.
Right.
Well, at the very basic level, cosmological quantum physics suggests that if this universe here is as real as we believe that it is, it must have been cast into reality by an external observer.
God? And yet paradoxically, how can there be anything external in an all-inclusive universe? Uh-huh.
So, you see? My own quest for God has always been inextricably intertwined with my work.
Does that help you sleep? No.
It keeps me awake.
All right, so, what's the point? The point is to keep looking for the point.
That's what the Rabbi said.
Rabbi? Yeah.
Rabbi.
Well I will rejoin Charlie and Amita.
Oh, and I should do that, too.
Tough to track a woman without an identity, but I found Talma's corporation.
Two weeks ago, Aquarius Specialties Limited rented trucks to load in at the Tower of Mystery.
Now, where'd the trucks pick up from? Movers said that they picked up two big crates in the middle of an abandoned parking lot.
Paranoid magicians.
Yeah, hoax the FBI- I'd hide my prep, too.
Aquarius Specialties Limited also rented a storefront on Hollywood Boulevard.
It's a high traffic area, lots of tourists, entertainment seekers.
Charlie thinks there's gonna be a part two to Talma's trick Which is why I checked into the party rental agencies in the area.
Two of them have been contracted to deliver folding chairs, tents and big screen TV's to the same location.
Come on.
"Hollywood Brasserie"? Talma loves her misdirection.
Oh, come on, now, does it really need to be this dark? You scared, Granger? Nah.
Pitch-black was top of my class in "Pitchblack Assaults on Magical Illusions" back in Quantico.
Let's see.
Lights.
?? Murder? Well, ME's initial report is inconclusive.
Talma drowned, but she has a contusion on the side of her head, too.
She also had a laceration on her right leg, pretty deep.
That explains the blood we found at the Tower of Mystery.
However she got cut, accidental or otherwise, the wound was bandaged, trace amounts of blood in the water.
She didn't bleed to death.
According to Charlie's analysis, this was the master fail-safe- it's a handle that would release the water.
Now it was broken off and wiped clean of prints, so, definitely somebody was here.
Hairline fracture in the glass could match the contusion on her head.
Yeah, I'm thinking maybe there was a struggle, and she got knocked out against the glass.
Yeah, then the killer dumped her, unconscious, in the water to drown.
All right, so they broke the handle- that's master fail-safe, so the internal ones wouldn't work.
It still doesn't answer one big question.
Who'd want to kill her? Why can't they just build a normal machine, with everything laid out in an orderly fashion? Function fit to form.
The magic design for the magic machine.
Let's take a break from the flying part.
You know, it's like a jigsaw puzzle.
You put together the frame pieces before trying to work the more difficult middle section.
You know she's right.
If we could just get a handle on the cylinder, we could figure out how much tensile strength is needed for these flying wires and how much for the common joints between the glass and filigree.
Uh, the glass.
That's simple.
Yeah.
The first question.
How much water can it handle? Well, witnesses from the performance report that it was full.
Talkin' 50 cubic feet of water.
Water weight 3,300 pounds.
A little over one a half tons.
Wow.
That amount of water withstanding that kind of pressure.
You're not gonna find that kind of glass at Home Depot.
There are two factories that produce the quality of glass that Charlie says is required to create the cylinder.
Asahi Glass in Tokyo and Undverglasen in Garmisch, Germany.
Undverglasen shipped four tons of multi-ply tempered-curved glass to a Burbank warehouse last year.
Well, before she hit the fast track with Susie Weisz, she bounced around for about five years.
Why's that? Maybe because her previous boss drowned while was on stage.
Who's the girl in the middle? That's Drowndini's assistant.
That could be a lead.
Sister blames Talma for her brother's death.
Yeah, same MO, drowning, could fit for revenge.
That's my date.
Sarah.
Her real name is Jenny Calandro.
Can't believe your search led you to the doorstep of Gage Jones.
Impressive, Dr.
Eppes.
Uh, guy's one of the legendary Artisans of the magic world.
Of course, last I knew, he was, uh, working in an abandoned ferry on Fidalgo Island in Washington.
Is all right that we just let ourselves in like this? Oh, I called ahead.
Uh, magic awaits.
Professor Fleinhardt, if you would, please.
My pleasure.
Around here.
The guillotine! It's a far better thing I do, than I have ever done.
The blade folds up into the trick.
Shh! It's angles.
It's all angles.
That's all I'm saying.
Okay, let's, uh, show you another one.
How about the Kafka box? Are you ready to metamorphosize? Into what, a cockroach? So this one is a false back.
He's still inside the box.
Okay, that's pretty cool.
He climbs in, Penn spins the box, engages the catch, the catch releases two mirrors.
The mirrors fold out at 45 degree angles.
You think you're looking at the back of the box, it's really just reflections.
Hey, quiet you.
Mr.
Jillette.
Three guests.
From the FBI.
You're here because of the lovely and talented Miss Talma, I take it.
Well, may be a wasted trip, she's not here.
But she'll turn up in due time at a place of her choosing, for the best possible impact.
I hate to break it to you, she already turned up.
Oh, was it wondrous? She was dead.
Real dead.
But I just saw her.
I mean I built Aquarius.
She was found in the second part of the trick on Hollywood Boulevard.
She drowned inside.
No, couldn't have drowned.
We had too many fail-safes built in.
There was a handle on the outside that was broken off by someone else.
You know a, a girl, a former assistant- Jenny Calandro? Yeah, I know Jenny.
Talma brought her around a couple times to look at Aquarius.
You got an address? We think it may not have been an accident.
You're damn right it wasn't an accident.
If Talma's dead, she was murdered.
Hello.
Hi.
Oh, hey.
What's on? Baseball, basketball, football, hockey.
Take your pick.
What, you got to ask? Hockey.
That's right So what is, uh, what is all this about you, uh, going to temple? I went once.
Yeah, and? Thinking I might take a class or two.
You know, I'd be more than happy to talk to you about it.
I mean, I've been to Hebrew school.
I know all the prayers.
Thanks.
We'll see how it goes.
I think I'm okay for now.
Right.
Hockey.
I know I'm still new and all, but is this status quo for you guys? What's that? Stalking girls on company time.
My date's home.
Jenny.
You've got to be kidding me.
You do have a way with the ladies.
You are not playing chicken with the FBI.
Yeah, she is pretty.
??I swear.
You blamed her for your brother's death.
You wanted revenge.
Anthony was reckless.
He didn't check his gear, his machines.
He thought that if they worked once, they always worked.
That's what killed him, and I knew that.
Oh, so it was a coincidence that you were at the show the night that Talma disappeared? I mean, the night she was murdered.
Talma dealt with my brother's death differently.
I moved on.
She made it her life's work to court death.
I brought you to the show, because an old friend asked me to.
I was her assistant, nothing more.
You helped her out of that box? As soon as you left, I went under the stage, removed the hatch.
Talma was covered in her own blood.
When she fell through the trap door, she hit a metal strut, tore her leg open.
No, we never found a bloody strut.
She took it, said it added to the mystery.
Look, I wanted to take her to the hospital, but she insisted she was fine.
We bandaged the leg, I helped her to her car and she drove off on her own.
Where'd she go? To Hollywood.
To make sure the second Aquarius was working properly.
I told you, she learned from what happened to my brother.
My job was to get back to you.
You were just supposed to be some cop.
I could have gone up to any guy in that bar.
But I was selfish.
I went up to the right one.
Best sucker in the house.
Not what I meant.
She lying? I doubt it.
But, hey, I'm the last guy you should ask, right? What are you talking about? You're the only one I can ask.
Don, send somebody else in there to talk to her.
Well, either she's very good, or she does like you.
I believe she knew Talma.
I believe she was working with Talma that night.
And I believe there's much better ways to get payback than to sucker an FBI agent into watching you kill your target.
Yeah, I agree with you.
So what do we do with her? She committed a crime, and she ran.
You make the call.
How much have they dismantled? Apparently, the veneer was taken down, but the guts remain.
The guts, which are usually under the stage and lead to a panel offstage where the technician calls the shots.
These must be the fail-safe dials.
Check the glass.
All right, looks like there are two switches hidden inside the cylinder: one high and one low.
Water release valves.
The techs indicate they've not been touched.
It's a good gument for Talma being unconscious.
She couldn't trip the fail-safes.
One, two, three input pipes.
Reconstruction of the apparatus indicates there should be at least four.
Should be six if they were playing it safe.
So to fill this cylinder with three pipes in five seconds Or less.
would require higher water pressure than we'd anticipated, extremely high water pressure.
Where does that leave us? All right, hey.
We don't think Talma was murdered.
No, our findings suggest that higher than intended pressure was ultimately responsible for Talma's death.
So this is all an accident? The flaw was in the machine.
Well, how can you figure that out if you never even saw the trick being performed? We used Design Recovery.
It was originally implemented to handle secretive computer software systems hidden within coding: illusions, ghosts in the machine.
To a first-time viewer, a staple jt looks like a tiny piece of metal holding your papers together.
But pry it loose and study its dimensions, how it bends, you realize at some point it changed shape to achieve its goal.
Put it under a microscope and you see telltale signs it was attached to others of its kind.
Without seeing the staple's origin, we reverse engineer the unseen machine that put our tiny little piece of metal to work.
Most likely, Talma climbed in, and then someone else started Aquarius.
However, the water filled up too quickly.
She slammed her head against the glass on the inside.
Added to the blood loss, it knocked her unconscious.
Which is why she never engaged any of the security devices inside the machine.
Yeah, it doesn't explain the handle, the fracture, the other person, why they didn't let her out We think they tried.
They pulled the handle, but that failed.
Yeah, they tried another way: brute force.
We found this fracture in the exact structurally weakest place.
It wasn't Talma's head that cracked the glass, it was probably somebody with a sledgehammer.
So all the signs of attempted murder were actually evidence that someone tried to save her.
Yeah, and there was only one person, other than Talma, that had inside knowledge about this trick: the man who built it.
Magicians have something against track lighting or what? This place is a lot less threatening during the day, trust me.
Jones? Don't make us have to come get you! NIKKI I think we got him.
What's the matter, there was no bed to hide under? Got him.
Tried so hard to get her out.
You got to believe me.
An artisan's worst nightmare is to have a trick go wrong.
You gave us Jenny Calandro, knowing she was innocent.
Why didn't you tell us before? I wanted to, it's just she was out cold, laying there as the water killed her.
The fail-safes We know.
Her chest stopped moving.
I was inches away from her when she died.
It was an accident.
All you had to do was come forward.
Oh, and watch my entire career, my greatest invention, die with her? Nobody buys illusions that kill you for real.
So, hmm, how was that? Well to be honest, Mom's was better.
Oh, come on.
It's the same recipe.
I'm just saying.
That's all, I'm just saying.
Hey, listen, Donny, um do you feel like I cheated you out something? We were never a religious family.
It's not about that.
I just I always used to know exactly what I was doing, why I was doing it, you know, what I wanted and I just I feel like I'm missing something.
So, you, um you think, uh, you'll find it by going to temple? I don't know.
I just know where it's not.
You know, it's not in the job.
I know, but I I never taught you about, you know, God and or gave you that choice.
No, you did.
You know, look where I'm looking for it.
Right.
So, um that's it? That's all I got.
I cooked, you do the dishes.
Don't look at your phone as if it's gonna ring and save you.
Just do the dishes.
This is hardly a romantic spot.
It's not a romantic spot.
It's a learning spot.
Help me with this.
Amita? I want to show you what I see in magic.
Uh, I see a harness.
Yes.
go over there to the switchboard.
Flip switch seven.
Uh, hey, are we sure this is safe? Well, we know the design better than anybody.
Eight.
Nine.
Ten.
Do you see it yet?