The Vanished Man

by Jeffery Deaver

  "Let's go this way." Malerick led her to the end of the cross street, across a pedestrian bridge over the parkway and down into an overgrown, deserted strip of land on the riverbank.

  He disengaged her arm from his and gripped her firmly around the back and under the arm. He felt her breast with his fingers as her head lolled against him.

  "Look," she said, pointing unsteadily into the Hudson, where dozens of sailboats and cabin cruisers moved over the sparkling dark blue water.

  Malerick said, "My boat's down there."

  "I like boats."

  "So do I," he said softly.

  "Really?" she asked, laughing and adding in a whisper that, guess what, she and her ex-husband had had one. But she'd lost it in the divorce.

  Chapter Fifteen The riding academy was a slice of old New York.

  Smelling powerful barn scent, Amelia Sachs looked through an archway into the interior of the woody old place at the horses and, atop them, riders--all of whom looked stately in their tan pants, black or red riding jackets, velvet helmets.

  A half-dozen uniformeds from the nearby Twentieth Precinct stood in and outside the lobby. More officers were in the park, under the command of Lon Sellitto, deployed around the bridle path, looking for their elusive prey.

  Sachs and Bell walked into the office and the detective flashed his gold shield to the woman behind the counter. She looked over his shoulder at the officers outside and asked uneasily, "Yes? Is there a problem?"

  "Ma'am, do you use Tack-Pure to treat the saddles and leather?"

  She glanced at an assistant, who nodded. "Yessir, we do. We use a lot of it."

  Bell continued, "We found traces of some and of some horse manure at the scene of a homicide today. We think the suspect in that killing might work here or be stalking one of your employees or a rider."

  "No! Who?"

  "That's what we're not sure about, sorry to say. And we're not sure of the suspect's appearance either. All we know is he's average build. Around fifty years old. White. Might have a beard and brown hair but we aren't sure. Fingers on his left hand might be deformed. What we need is for you to talk to your employees, regular customers too if there're any hereabouts, and see if they've noticed anybody fitting that description. Or anybody who seems like they'd be a threat."

  "Of course," she said uncertainly. "I'll do whatever I can. Sure."

  Bell took several of the uniformed patrol officers and disappeared through an old doorway into the pungent sawdust-filled riding arena. "We'll do a search," he called back to Sachs.

  The policewoman nodded and looked out the window, checking on Kara, who sat alone in Sellitto's unmarked car, parked at the curb next to Sachs's deep-yellow Camaro. The young woman wasn't happy being confined in the car but Sachs had been adamant about her staying out of danger.

  Robert-Houdin had tighter tricks than the Marabouts. Though I think they almost killed him.

  Don't worry. I'll make sure that doesn't happen to you.

  Sachs glanced at the clock--2:00 P.M. She radioed in to Central and had the transmission patched into Rhyme's phone. A moment later the criminalist came on the line. "Sachs, Lon's teams haven't seen anything in Central Park. Any luck with you?"

  "The manager's interviewing staff and riders here at the academy. Roland and his team are searching the stables." She then noticed the manager with a cluster of employees. There were assorted frowns and looks of concern on their faces. One girl, a round-faced redhead, suddenly raised her hand to her mouth in shock. She began to nod.

  "Hold on, Rhyme. May have something."

  The manager beckoned Sachs over and the teenager said, "I don't know if it's, like, anything important. But there's one thing?"

  "What's your name?"

  "Tracey?" she answered as if she were asking. "I'm a groom here?"

  "Go ahead."

  "Okay. What it is, is there's this rider who comes in every Saturday. Cheryl Marston."

  Rhyme shouted into Sachs's ear, "At the same time? Ask her if she comes in at the same time every week."

  Sachs relayed the question.

  "Oh, yeah, she does," the girl said. "She's like, you know, clockwork. Been coming here for years."

  The criminalist noted, "People with regular habits're easiest to target. Tell her to go on."

  "And what about her, Tracey?"

  "Today she comes back from a ride? About a half hour ago? And what it is, is she hands off Don Juan to me, that's like her favorite horse, and she wants me and the vet to check him out careful because a bird flew into his face and spooked him. So, we're looking him over and she's telling me about this guy who came along and calmed Donny down. We tell her that Donny looks fine and she's going on about this guy, yadda, yadda, yadda, and how interesting he is and she's all excited 'cause she's going to have coffee with him and he might be a real horse whisperer. I saw him downstairs, waiting for her. And the thing is, I'm like, what's wrong with his hand? 'Cause he kinda hid it, you know. It looked like he only had three fingers."

  "That's him!" Sachs said. "Do you know where they were going?"

  She pointed west, away from the park. "I think that way. She didn't say where exactly."

  "Get a description," Rhyme called.

  The girl explained that he had a beard and his eyebrows were odd. "All kind of grown together."

  To alter a face the most important thing is the eyebrows. Change those and the face is sixty, seventy percent different.

  "Wearing?" she asked.

  "A windbreaker, running shoes, jogging pants."

  "Color?"

  "The jacket and pants were dark. Blue or black. I didn't see his shirt."

  Bell returned with his officers and muttered, "Not a burr on the dog."

  "Got a lead here." She explained about the rider and the bearded man then asked the girl, "And you're pretty sure she didn't know this guy?"

  "No way. Ms. Marston and me, we've known each other for a while and she told me she's like totally off dating. Doesn't trust men. Her ex, he cheated on her and then, in the divorce, he got the sailboat. She's still pissed about that."

  *

  The best illusionists, my friends, engage in a practice known as "routining." That means planning the order and the pacing of their acts carefully--to make the performances as intense as possible.

  For our third act today we first saw our animal illusion, featuring wonder-horse Donny Boy, in Central Park. Then we slowed the pace with some classic sleight of hand, combined with a touch of mentalism.

  And now we turn to escapism.

  We'll see what is perhaps Harry Houdini's most famous escape. In this routine, which he developed himself, he was bound, hung by his heels and submerged in a narrow tank of water. He had only a few minutes to try to bend upward from the waist, release his ankles and open the locked top of the chamber before he drowned.

  The tank was, of course, "prepared." The bars apparently intended to keep the glass from shattering were actually handholds that let him pull himself up to reach his ankles. The locks on his feet and the top of the tank itself had hidden latches that would instantly release his ankles and the lid.

  Our re-creation of the famous escapist's popular feat, needless to say, doesn't offer such features. Our performer will be on her own. And I've added a few variations of my own. All for your entertainment, of course.

  And now, courtesy of Mr. Houdini, the Water Torture Cell.

  Now beardless and dressed in chinos and a white dress shirt over a white T-shirt, Malerick wrapped chains tightly around Cheryl Marston. Her ankles first then her chest and arms.

  He paused and looked around again but they remained hidden from view of the road and the river by thick bushes.

  They were beside the Hudson River, next to a small stagnant pool of water, which at one time had apparently been a tiny inlet for dinghies. Landfill and debris had sealed it long ago and created this foul-smelling pond about ten feet in diameter. On one side was a rotting pier in the middle of wh
ich was a rusty crane that had been used for lifting boats out of the water. Malerick now swung a rope over the crane, caught the end and began tying it to the chains holding Cheryl's feet.

  Escapists love chains. They look impressive, they have a wonderfully sadistic flavor to them and seem more formidable than silks and ropes. And they're heavy--just the thing to keep a bound performer under water.

  "No, no, noooo," whispered the groggy woman.

  He stroked her hair as he surveyed the chains. Simple and tight. Houdini wrote, "Strange as it may appear, I have found that the more spectacular the fastening to the eyes of the audience, the less difficult the escape really proves to be."

  This was true, Malerick knew from experience. Dramatic-looking masses of thick ropes and chains wound around and around the illusionist were in fact easy to get out of. Fewer restraints and simpler fasteners were much harder. Like these, for instance.

  "Noooooo," she whispered groggily. "It hurts. Please! . . . What are you--?"

  Malerick pressed duct tape over her mouth. Then he braced himself, took a good grip and slowly pulled down on the rope, which in turn lifted the whimpering lawyer's feet and began dragging her slowly toward the brackish water.

  *

  On this glorious spring afternoon a busy crafts fair filled the large central square of West Side College between Seventy-ninth and Eightieth Streets, so dense with visitors it would be virtually impossible to spot the killer and his victim in the crowd.

  On this glorious spring afternoon customers filled the scores of neighborhood restaurants and coffee shops, in any one of which the Conjurer might at this moment be suggesting to Cheryl Marston that she go for a drive with him or they stop at her apartment.

  On this glorious spring afternoon fifty alleyways bisected the blocks here and offered, in their dim seclusion, a perfect killing ground.

  Sachs, Bell and Kara jogged up and down the streets, looking through the crafts fair, the restaurants and the alleys. And every other place they could think to search.

  They found nothing.

  Until, desperate minutes later, a break.

  The two cops and Kara walked into Ely's Coffee Shop near Riverside Drive and scanned the crowd. Sachs gripped Bell's arm, nodding toward the cash register. Next to it were a black velvet riding hat and a stained leather crop.

  Sachs ran to the manager, a swarthy Middle Easterner. "Did a woman leave those here?"

  "Yeah, ten minutes ago. She--"

  "Was she with a man?"

  "Yeah."

  "Beard and a running suit?"

  "That's them. She forgot the hat and that whip thing on the floor under the table."

  "Do you know where they went?" Bell asked.

  "What is happening? Is there--"

  "Where?" Sachs insisted.

  "Okay, I hear him say he going to show her his boat. But I hope he took her home."

  "How do you mean?" Sachs asked.

  "The woman, she was sick. I figure that why she forgot her stuff."

  "Sick?"

  "Couldn't walk steady, you know what I'm saying? Seem drunk but all they drank was coffee. And she was fine when they got here."

  "He drugged her," Sachs muttered to Bell.

  "Drugged her?" the manager asked. "Hey, what is story?"

  She asked, "Which table were they at?"

  He pointed to one where four women sat, talking and eating, and doing both quite loudly. " 'Scuse me," Sachs said to them and gave the area a fast examination. She saw no obvious evidence on or beneath the table.

  "We've gotta look for her," she said to Bell.

  "If he said boat, let's go west. The Hudson."

  Sachs nodded to where the Conjurer and Cheryl had sat. "That's a crime scene--don't wash it or sweep under it. And move them to a different table," she shouted, pointing to the four wide-eyed and momentarily silent women, and ran outside into the dazzling sunlight.

  Chapter Sixteen

  She saw her husband crying.

  Tears of regret that he had to "end the marriage."

  End the marriage.

  Like taking out the trash.

  Walking the dog.

  It was our fucking marriage! It wasn't a thing.

  But Roy didn't feel that way. Roy wanted a stubby assistant securities analyst instead of her and that was that.

  Another gagging flood of hot slimy water shot up her nose.

  Air, air, air. . . . Give me air!

  Now Cheryl Marston saw her father and mother at Christmas, decades ago, coyly wheeling out the bicycle Santa had brought her from the North Pole. Look, honey, Santa even has a pink helmet for you to protect your pretty little noggin. . . .

  "Ahhhhhh . . ."

  Coughing and choking, gripped by constricting chains, Cheryl was hauled out of the opaque water of the greasy pond, upside down, spinning lazily, held by a rope looped over a metal crane jutting over the water.

  Her skull throbbed as the blood settled in her head. "Stop, stop, stop!" she screamed silently. What was going on? She remembered Donny Boy rearing, somebody calming him, a nice man, coffee in a Greek restaurant, conversation, something about boats, then the world uncoiling in dizziness, silly laughter.

  Then chains. The terrible water.

  And now this man studying her with pleasant curiosity on his face as she died.

  Who is he? Why is he doing this? Why?

  Inertia spun her slowly in a circle and he could no longer see her pleading eyes, as the inverted, hazy line of New Jersey miles away across the Hudson came into view.

  She revolved slowly back until she was looking at the brambles and lilacs. And him.

  He in turn looked down at her, nodded, then played out the rope, lowering her into the disgusting pond again.

  Cheryl bent hard at the waist, trying desperately to keep away from the surface of the water, as if it were scalding hot. But her own weight, the weight of the chains pulled her down below the surface. Holding her breath, she shivered fiercely and shook her head, struggling vainly to pull free from the unbreakable metal.

  Then Cheryl's husband was here again, in front of her, explaining, explaining, explaining why the divorce was the best thing that could've happened to her. Roy looked up, wiped away crocodile tears and said it was for the best. She'd be happier this way. Look, here was something for her. Roy opened a door and there was a shiny new Schwinn bike. Streamers on the handle grips, training wheels in the back and a helmet--a pink one--to protect her noggin.

  Cheryl gave up. You win, you win. Take the goddamn boat, take your goddamn girlfriend. Just let me go, let me go in peace. She inhaled through her nose to let comforting death into her lungs.

  *

  "There!" Amelia Sachs cried.

  She and Bell ran forward over the pedestrian walkway toward the thick cluster of bushes and trees on the edge of the Hudson River. A man stood on a rotting pier, which had apparently been a dock years ago before access to the river had been filled in. This area was overgrown, filled with trash and stank of stagnant water.

  A man in chinos and a white shirt was holding a rope that arced over a small rusting crane. The other end disappeared below the surface.

  "Hey," Bell called, "you!"

  He had brown hair, yes, but the outfit was different. No beard, either. And his eyebrows didn't seem that thick. Sachs couldn't see if the fingers of his left hand were fused together.

  Still, what did that mean?

  The Conjurer could be a man, could be a woman.

  The Conjurer could be invisible.

  As they jogged closer he looked up in apparent relief. "Here!" he cried. "Help me! Over here! There's a woman in the water!"

  Bell and Sachs left Kara beside the overpass and sprinted through the brush surrounding the brackish pond. "Don't trust him," she called breathlessly to Bell as they ran.

  "I'm with you there, Amelia."

  The man pulled harder and feet and then legs in tan slacks emerged, followed by a woman's body. She was wrappe
d in chains. Oh, the poor thing! Sachs thought. Please let her be alive.

  They closed the distance fast, Bell calling on his handy-talkie for backup and medics. Several other people who were on the east side of the pedestrian bridge were gathering, alarmed at what was going on.

  "Help me! I can't pull her up alone!" the rescuer called to Bell and Sachs. His voice was a gasp, out of breath from the effort. "This man, he tied her up and pushed her into the water. He tried to kill her!"

  Sachs drew her weapon and trained it on the man.

  "Hey, what're you doing?" he asked in shock. "I'm trying to save her!" He glanced down at a cell phone on his belt. "I'm the one called nine-one-one."

  She still couldn't see his left hand; it was enclosed by his right.

  "Keep your hands on that rope, sir," she said. "Keep 'em where I can see them."

  "I didn't do anything!" He was wheezing--an odd sound. Maybe it wasn't exertion but asthma.

  Staying clear of her line of fire, Bell grabbed the crane and swung it toward the muddy shore. When the woman was in arm's reach he tugged her toward him, as the man holding the rope let out slack until she was lying on the ground. She lay on the grass, limp and cyanotic. The detective pulled the tape off her mouth, unhooked the chains and began to give her CPR.

  Sachs called to the dozen people gathered nearby, drawn by the commotion, "Is anybody a doctor?"

  No one answered. She glanced back at the victim and saw her stirring. . . . Then she began choking and spitting out water. Yes! They'd gotten to her in time. In a minute she'd be able to confirm the man's identity. Then she looked past the scene and noticed a wad of shiny navy-blue cloth. She caught sight of a zipper and sleeve. It could be the jogging jacket he'd quick-changed out of.

  The man's eyes followed hers and he saw it too.

  Was there a reaction, a faint wince? She thought so but couldn't tell for sure.

  "Sir," she called firmly, "until we get things sorted out here, I'm going to put some cuffs on you. I want your hands--"

  Suddenly a man's panicked voice shouted, "Yo, lady, look out! That guy in the jogging suit--to yo right! He got a gun!"

  People screamed and dropped to the ground and Sachs crouched, spinning to her right, squinting for a target. "Roland, look out!"

  Bell too dropped to the ground, beside the woman, and looked in the same direction as Sachs, his Sig in his hand.