The Vanished Man

by Jeffery Deaver

  "We'll get through it."

  "Love you," she whispered. His response was to inhale her flowery Quaker State scent and tell her that he loved her too.

  "Man, it's too bright." She looked toward the window, filled with glare from the circus spotlights. "Where're the shades?"

  "Burned up, remember?"

  "I thought Thom got some new ones."

  "He started to put them up but he was fussing too much. Measuring and everything. I threw him out and told him to do it later."

  Sachs slipped out of bed and found an extra sheet, draped it over the window, cutting out much of the light. She returned to bed, curled up against him and was soon asleep.

  But not Lincoln Rhyme. As he lay listening to the music and the cryptic voice of the MC some ideas began to form in his mind and the opportunity for sleep came and went. Soon he was completely awake, lost in his thoughts.

  Which were, not surprisingly, about the circus.

  *

  Late the next morning Thom walked into the bedroom to find that Rhyme had a visitor.

  "Hi," he said to Jaynene Williams, sitting in one of the new chairs beside his bed.

  "Thom." She shook his hand.

  The aide, who'd been out shopping, was clearly surprised to see someone there. Thanks to the computer, the environmental control units and CCTV, Rhyme was, of course, perfectly capable of calling someone up, inviting them over and letting them inside when they arrived.

  "No need to look so shocked," Rhyme said caustically. "I have invited people over before, you know."

  "Blue moon comes to mind."

  "Maybe I'll hire Jaynene here to replace you."

  "Why don't you hire her as well as me. With two people here we could share the abuse." He smiled at her. "I wouldn't do that to you, though."

  "I've handled worse."

  "Are you a coffee lady or a tea lady?"

  Rhyme said, "Sorry. Where were my manners? Should've had the pot boiling by now."

  "Coffee'll do."

  "Scotch for me," Rhyme said. When Thom glanced at the clock, the criminalist added, "A small shot for medicinal purposes."

  "Coffee all around," the aide said and disappeared.

  After he'd gone Rhyme and Jaynene made small talk about spinal cord injury patients and the exercises he was now pursuing fanatically. Then, impatient as ever, Rhyme decided he'd been the polite host long enough and lowered his voice to say, "There's a problem, something bothering me. I think you can help. I'm hoping you can."

  She eyed him cautiously. "Maybe."

  "Could you close the door?"

  The large woman glanced at it, rose and then did as he asked. She returned to her seat.

  "How long have you known Kara?" he asked.

  "Kara? Little over a year. Ever since her mother came to Stuyvesant."

  "That's an expensive place, isn't it?"

  "Painfully," Jaynene said. "Terrible what they charge. But all of the places like ours, the fees're pretty much the same."

  "Does her mother have insurance?"

  "Medicare is all. Kara pays for most of it herself." She added, "As best she can. She's current now but she's in arrears a lot of the time."

  Rhyme nodded slowly. "I'm going to ask you one more question. Think about it before you answer. And I need you to be completely honest."

  "Well," the nurse said uncertainly, looking down at the newly varnished floor. "I'll do the best I can."

  *

  That afternoon Roland Bell was in Rhyme's living room. To the soundtrack of some enticing Dave Brubeck jazz piano they were talking about the evidence in the Andrew Constable case.

  Charles Grady and the state's attorney general himself had decided to delay the man's trial in order to include additional charges against the bigot--attempted murder of his own lawyer, conspiracy to commit murder and felony murder. It wouldn't be an easy case--linking Constable to Barnes and the other conspirators in the Patriot Assembly--but if anyone could bring in convictions Grady was the man to do it. He was also going for the death penalty against Arthur Loesser for the murder of Patrol Officer Larry Burke, whose body had been found in an alley on the Upper West Side. Lon Sellitto was presently at the officer's full-dress funeral in Queens.

  Amelia Sachs now walked through the doorway, looking frazzled after an all-day meeting with lawyers arranged through the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association about her possible suspension. She was supposed to have been back hours ago and, glancing at her face, Rhyme deduced that the results of the session were not good.

  He himself had some news--about his meeting with Jaynene and what had happened after that--and had tried to reach her but had been unable to. Now, though, there was no time to brief her because another visitor appeared.

  Thom ushered Edward Kadesky into the room. "Mr. Rhyme," he said, nodding. He'd forgotten Sachs's name but he gave her a second nod in greeting. He shook Roland Bell's hand. "I got your message. It said there's something more about the case."

  Rhyme nodded. "This morning I did some digging, looking into a few loose ends."

  "What loose ends?" Sachs asked.

  "Ends I didn't know were loose. Unknown loose ends."

  She frowned. The producer too looked troubled. "Weir's assistant--Loesser. He hasn't escaped, has he?"

  "No, no. He's still in detention."

  The doorbell rang. Thom vanished and a moment later Kara stepped through the doorway into the room. She looked around, ruffling her short hair, which had lost its purple sheen and was now ruddy as a freckle. "Hi," she said to the group, blinking in surprise when she saw Kadesky.

  "Can I get anybody anything?" Thom asked.

  "Maybe if you could leave us for a minute, Thom. Please."

  The aide glanced at Rhyme and, hearing the firm, troubled tone in his voice, nodded and left the room. The criminalist said to Kara, "Thanks for coming by. I just need to follow up on a few things about the case."

  "Sure," she said.

  Loose ends . . .

  Rhyme explained, "I want to know a few more details about the night that the Conjurer drove the ambulance bomb into the circus."

  The young woman nodded, flicking her black fingernails against one another. "Anything I can do to help, I'd be glad to."

  "The show was scheduled to start at eight, wasn't it?" Rhyme asked Kadesky.

  "That's right."

  "You weren't back from your dinner and radio interview yet when Loesser parked the ambulance in the doorway?"

  "No, I wasn't."

  Rhyme turned to Kara. "But you were there?"

  "Yeah. I saw the ambulance drive in. I didn't think anything about it at the time."

  "Where did Loesser park, exactly?"

  "It was under the box seat scaffolding," she said.

  "Not under the expensive seats though?" Rhyme asked Kadesky.

  "No," the man said.

  "So it was near the main fire exit--the one most people would use in an evacuation."

  "That's right."

  Bell asked, "Lincoln, what're you getting at?"

  "What I'm getting at is Loesser parked the ambulance so that it would do the most damage and yet still give a few people in the box seats a chance to escape. How did he know exactly where to park it?"

  "I don't know," the producer responded. "He probably checked it out ahead of time and saw it was the best location--I mean, best from his point of view. Worst for us."

  "He might've checked it out earlier," Rhyme mused. "But he also would be reluctant to be seen doing reconnaissance around the circus--since we had officers stationed there."

  "True."

  "So, isn't it possible that someone on the inside might've told him to park there?"

  "Inside?" Kadesky asked, frowning. "Are you saying somebody was helping him? No, none of my people would do that."

  "Rhyme," Sachs said, "what are you getting at?"

  He ignored her and turned again to Kara. "I asked you to go to the tent to find Mr. Kadesky about when?"<
br />
  "I guess it was about seven-fifteen."

  "And you were in the box seat area?" She nodded and he continued, "Near the exit row?"

  The woman looked around the room awkwardly. "I guess. Yeah, I was." She looked at Sachs. "Why's he asking me all this? What's going on?"

  Rhyme answered, "I'm asking because I remembered something you told us, Kara. About people who're involved in an illusionist's act. There's the assistant--the person that we know is working with the illusionist. Then there's the volunteer from the audience. Then there's someone else: the confederate. Those're people who are actually working with the magician but seem to have nothing to do with him. They pretend to be stagehands or volunteers."

  Kadesky said, "Right, lots of magicians use confederates."

  Rhyme turned to Kara and said sharply, "Which is what you've been all along, haven't you?"

  "What's that?" Bell asked, his drawl more pronounced in his surprise.

  The young woman gasped, shaking her head.

  "She's been working with Loesser from the beginning," Rhyme said to Sachs.

  "No!" Kadesky said. "Her?"

  Rhyme continued, "She needs money badly and Loesser paid her fifty thousand to help him."

  Desperate, Kara said, "But Loesser and I never even met before today!"

  "You didn't need to see him in person. Balzac was the intermediary. He was in on it too."

  "Kara?" Sachs whispered. "No. I don't believe it. She wouldn't do that!"

  "Wouldn't she? What do you know about her? Do you even know her real name?"

  "I . . ." Sachs's troubled eyes turned toward the young woman. "No," she whispered. "She never told me."

  Tearfully the young woman shook her head. Finally she said, "Amelia, I'm so sorry. . . . But you don't understand. . . . Mr. Balzac and Weir were friends. They performed together for years and he was devastated when Weir died in the fire. Loesser told Mr. Balzac what he was going to do and they forced me to help him. But, you have to believe me, I didn't know they were going to hurt anybody. Mr. Balzac said it was just an extortion thing--to get even with Mr. Kadesky. By the time I realized Loesser was killing people it was too late. They said if I didn't keep helping him he was going to give my name to the police. I'd go to jail forever. Mr. Balzac would too. . . ." She wiped her face. "I couldn't do that to him."

  "To your revered mentor," Rhyme said bitterly.

  With a look of panic in her brilliant blue eyes the young woman shoved her way through Sachs and Kadesky and leaped for the door.

  "Stop her, Roland!" Rhyme shouted.

  Bell sprinted forward and tackled her. They tumbled into the corner of the room. She was strong but Bell managed to cuff her. He rose, panting from the effort, and pulled his Motorola off his belt, calling in for a prisoner transfer down to detention.

  Looking disgusted, he put the radio away and read Kara her rights.

  Rhyme sighed. "I tried to tell you earlier, Sachs. I couldn't get through on the phone. I wish it weren't true. But there you have it. She and Balzac were with Loesser all along. They gulled us like we were their audience."

  Chapter Fifty-one Whispering, the policewoman said, "I just . . . I don't see how she did it."

  Rhyme said to Bell, "She manipulated the evidence, lied to us, planted fake clues. . . . Roland, go over to the whiteboards. I'll show you."

  "Kara planted evidence?" Sachs asked, astonished.

  "Oh, you bet she did. And she did a damn good job too. From the first scene, even before you found her. You told me that she gave you that sign to meet her in the coffee shop. They set it up from the beginning."

  Bell was at the whiteboards and as he pointed out items of evidence Rhyme explained how Kara had tricked them.

  A moment later Thom called, "There's an officer here."

  "Show 'em in," Rhyme said.

  A policewoman walked through the doorway and joined Sachs, Bell and Kadesky, surveying them through stylish glasses with a look of curiosity on her face. She nodded to Rhyme and, in a Hispanic accent, asked Bell, "You called for prisoner transport, Detective?"

  Bell nodded to the corner of the room. "She's over there. I Mirandized her."

  The woman glanced toward the corner of the room at Kara's prone form and said, "Okay, I'll take her downtown." She hesitated. "But I got a question first."

  "Question?" Rhyme asked, frowning.

  "What're you talking about, Officer?" Bell asked.

  Ignoring the detective, the officer sized up Kadesky. "Could I see some identification, sir?"

  "Me?" the producer asked.

  "Yessir. I'll need to see your driver's license."

  "You want my ID again? I did that the other day."

  "Sir, please."

  Huffily the man reached into his hip pocket and withdrew his wallet.

  Except that it wasn't his.

  He stared at a battered zebra-skin billfold. "Wait, I . . . I don't know what this is."

  "It's not yours?" the cop asked.

  "No," he said, troubled. He began patting his pockets. "I don't know--"

  "See, that's what I was afraid of," the policewoman said. "I'm sorry, sir. You're under arrest for pickpocketing. You have the right to remain silent--"

  "This is bullshit," Kadesky muttered. "There's some mistake." He opened up the wallet and stared at it for a moment. Then he barked an astonished laugh, held up the driver's license for everyone to see. It was Kara's.

  There was a handwritten note inside. It dropped out. He picked it up. "It says, 'Gotcha,' " Kadesky said, narrowing his eyes and studying the policewoman closely, then the driver's license. "Wait, is this you?"

  The "officer" laughed and removed the glasses then her cop cap and the brunette wig beneath it, revealing the short reddish hair once again. With a towel that Roland Bell, now chuckling hard, handed her she wiped the dark-complexion makeup off her face and peeled away the thick eyebrows and the fake red nails covering the black glossy ones. She then took her wallet back from the hands of the astonished Edward Kadesky and handed him his, which she'd dipped when she'd plowed into him and Sachs in her "escape" toward the door.

  Sachs was shaking her head, too astonished to react. She and Kadesky were both staring at the body lying on the floor.

  The young illusionist walked into the corner and lifted the device, a lightweight frame in the shape of a person lying on her stomach. Short reddish-purple hair covered the head portion, and the body wore clothing that resembled the jeans and windbreaker Kara'd been in when Bell had cuffed her. The arms of the outfit ended in what turned out to be latex hands, hooked together with Bell's handcuffs, which Kara had escaped from and then relatched on the phony wrists.

  "It's a feke," Rhyme now announced to the room, nodding at the frame. "A phony Kara."

  When Sachs and the others had turned away--misdirected by Rhyme toward the chart--Kara had escaped from the cuffs, unfurled the body frame and then silently slipped out the door to do the quick change in the hallway.

  She now folded up the device, which compressed into a little package the size of a small pillow--she'd had it hidden under her jacket when she'd arrived. The dummy wouldn't have passed close examination but in the shadows, with an unsuspecting, misdirected audience, no one had noticed it wasn't the girl.

  Kadesky was shaking his head. "You did the whole escape and the quick change in less than a minute?"

  "Forty seconds."

  "How?"

  "You saw the effect," Kara said to him. "Think I'll keep the method to myself."

  "So the point of this is, I assume," said Kadesky cynically, "that you want an audition?"

  Kara hesitated and Rhyme shot a prodding glance toward the young woman.

  "No, the point is, this was the audition. I want a job."

  Kadesky studied her closely. "It was one trick. You have others?"

  "Plenty."

  "How many changes've you done in one show?"

  "Forty-two changes. Thirty characters. During a thirty-min
ute routine."

  "Forty-two setups in half an hour?" the producer asked, eyebrows raised.

  "Yep."

  He debated for only a few seconds. "Come see me next week. I'm not cutting back my current artists' time in the ring. But they could use an assistant and an understudy. And maybe you can do some shows at our winter camp in Florida."

  Rhyme and Kara exchanged glances. He nodded firmly.

  "Okay," the young woman said to Kadesky. She shook his hand.

  Kadesky glanced at the spring-loaded wire form that had fooled them. "You made that?"

  "Yep."

  "You might want to patent it."

  "I never thought about that. Thanks. I'll look into it."

  He looked her over again. "Forty-two in thirty minutes." Then nodding, he left the room. Both he and Kara looked as if they'd each bought a very nice, very underpriced sports car.

  Sachs laughed. "Damn, you had me going." A glance at Rhyme. "Both of you."

  "Wait up here," Bell said, feigning hurt. "I was in on it too. I'm the one hog-tied her."

  Sachs shook her head again. "When did you think this up?"

  It had started last night, Rhyme explained, lying in bed, listening to the music from Cirque Fantastique, the ringmaster's muted voice, the applause and laughter from the crowd. His thoughts had segued to Kara, how good her performance at Smoke & Mirrors had been. Recalling her lack of self-confidence and Balzac's sway over her.

  Recalling too what Sachs had told him about her mother's advanced senility. Which had prompted Rhyme's invitation to Jaynene the next morning.

  "I'm going to ask you one more question," Rhyme had said to the woman. "Think about it before you answer. And I need you to be completely honest."

  The query was: "Will her mother ever come out of it?"

  Jaynene had said, "Will she get back her mind, is that what you're asking?"

  "That's right. Will she recover?"

  "No."

  "So Kara's not taking her to England?"

  A sad laugh. "No, no, no. That woman's not going anywhere."

  "Kara said she couldn't quit her job because she needs to keep her mother in the nursing home."

  "She needs to be cared for, sure. But not at our place. Kara's paying for rehab and recreation, medical intervention. Short-term care. Kara's mom doesn't even know what year it is. She could be anywhere. Sorry to say it but all she needs is maintenance at this point."

  "What'll happen to her if she goes to a long-term home?"

  "She'll keep getting worse until the end. Just the same as if she stayed with us. Only it wouldn't bankrupt Kara."