The key to magic is misdirection.

When the cops come knocking on your door, you send them to someone else.

I’ve set out a scavenger hunt for them to find. My ex boyfriend’s old toothbrush is clogging the pipes in the victim’s bathroom sink. A water bottle with his DNA is in her trash can. Exactly five pieces of his hair, scattered around her apartment. One of his socks half buried in the grass surrounding her house.

He didn’t kill her, of course. It doesn’t matter—he might as well have. A killer sent to jail for the wrong crime is still a killer locked away.

They won’t convict him. The evidence is patchy and scarce. It won’t line up, because he didn’t do it. But by the time the cops realize that, I will be long, long gone.

While the audience is watching the magician twirl his wand, the woman behind the curtain disappears.