The Vanished Man

by Jeffery Deaver

  But of course simple locks like these meant nothing to him. He could open one in seconds and hide inside a dark storage room. He could get into a judge's chambers, hide until Monday. He could slip through one of the padlocked grates that led down to the utility tunnels, which in turn would give him access to half the buildings in downtown Manhattan, as well as the subway.

  She turned a corner and plunged down another dark corridor. Testing knobs as she went, she found one door unlocked.

  If he was inside the closet he would've heard her--the click of the knob, if not her footsteps--so there was nothing to do but go in fast. Shoving the door inward, flashlight up, ready to jump to her left if she saw a weapon turn her way (recalling that there's a tendency for a right-handed shooter to pull the gun to the left when panic firing, which sends the slug to the target's right).

  Arthritic knees screaming at the partial crouch, she swung the halogen beam throughout the room. A few boxes and file cabinets. Nothing else. Though as she turned to leave she recalled that he'd hidden in shadows by using a simple black cloth. She looked around the room again more slowly, probing with the flashlight.

  As she did she felt a touch on her neck.

  A gasp and she spun around, bringing the gun up--aiming at the center of the dust-coated cobweb that had caressed her skin.

  Back into the corridor.

  More locked doors. More dead ends.

  Footsteps approached. A man walked past her now, bald, in his sixties, dressed in a guard's uniform and wearing an appropriate ID badge. He nodded as he walked past. He was taller than Weir so she let him pass with no more than a glance.

  But then she thought there might be a way for a quick-change artist to change his height.

  Turning back, fast.

  The man was gone; she saw only an empty corridor. Or an apparently empty corridor. She recalled again the silk the Conjurer had hidden beneath to kill Svetlana Rasnikov, the mirror to kill Tony Calvert. Her body a knot of tension, she unholstered her weapon and started toward where the guard--the apparent guard--had disappeared.

  *

  Where? Where was Weir?

  Trotting along Centre Street, Roland Bell surveyed the landscape in front of him. Cars, trucks, hot dog vendors in front of their steaming metal carts, young people who'd been working at their perpetual-motion law firms or investment banks, others woozy from pitchers of beer at the South Street Seaport, dog walkers, shoppers, dozens of the Manhattanites who roam the streets on days beautiful and days gray simply because the city's energy draws them outside.

  Where?

  Bell thought much of life was like driving a nail--shooting, in his local vernacular. He'd been raised in the Albemarle Sound area of North Carolina, where guns were a necessity, not a fetish, and he'd been taught to respect them. Part of this involved concentration. Even simple shots--at a paper target, a rattlesnake or copperhead, a deer--could go wide and dangerous if you didn't stay focused on the target.

  Well, life was just like that. And Bell knew that whatever was going on inside the Tombs right now, he had to remain focused on his single job: protecting Charles Grady.

  Amelia Sachs called in and reported that she was checking out every human being she could find in the Criminal Courts building, of whatever age, race or size (she'd just tracked down and ID'd a bald guard, who was far taller than Weir and looked nothing like the killer but who had only passed muster because it turned out that he'd known her late father). She'd finished one wing of the basement and was about to start on another.

  Teams under Sellitto and Bo Haumann were still searching upper floors of the building, and the oddest addition of all to the hunt was none other than Andrew Constable himself, who was tracking down leads to Weir in upstate New York. Now that'd be a kick, Bell thought--if the man accused of the attempted murder in the first place turned out to be the one who found out where the real suspect was.

  Looking into the cars he jogged past, looking at trucks on the street, looking down alleyways, guns ready but not drawn. Bell had decided that it made the most sense for them to hit Grady here on the street, before he entered the building, where there was a better chance of escaping alive. He doubted that these people were suicidal--that didn't fit the profile. In the moment between the time Grady parked his car and stepped out until he walked into the massive doors of the grimy Criminal Courts building the killer would go for his shot. And an easy one it would be--there was virtually no cover here.

  Where was Weir?

  And, just as important, where was Grady?

  His wife had said he'd taken the family car, not the city one. Bell had put out an emergency vehicle locator for the prosecutor's Volvo but no one had spotted it.

  Bell turned slowly, surveying the scene, revolving like a lighthouse. His eyes rose to the building across the street, a government office building, a new one, with dozens of windows facing Centre Street. Bell had been involved in a brief hostage-taking in the building and he knew that it was practically deserted now, on Sunday. A perfect place to hide and wait for Grady.

  But then the street would be a good vantage point too--for a drive-by, say.

  Where, where?

  Roland Bell recalled a time he'd gone hunting with his daddy up in the Great Dismal Swamp in southern Virginia. They'd been charged by a wild boar and his father'd winged the animal. It had disappeared into the brush. The man had sighed and said, "We gotta go git him. Can't ever leave a wounded animal."

  "But he tried to attack us," the boy had protested.

  "Well now, son, we walked into his world. He didn't walk into ours. But that's neither here nor there. It's not a question of fairness. It's a question of we got to find him if it takes all day. Not humane to him and now he's twice as dangerous to anybody else comes along."

  Looking around them at the impossible tangle of brush and reeds and swamp grass and loblolly, stretching for miles, young Roland said, "But he could be anywhere, Dad."

  His father laughed grimly. "Oh, don't worry 'bout finding him. He'll find us. Keep your thumb on that safety, son. You may have to shoot fast. You comfortable with that?"

  "Yessir, I am."

  Bell now made another visual circuit of the vans, the alleyways nearby, the buildings next to and across the street from the courthouse.

  Nothing.

  No Charles Grady.

  No Erick Weir, no sign of any of the killer's confederates.

  Bell tapped the butt of his gun.

  Don't worry 'bout finding him. He'll find us. . . .

  Chapter Thirty-nine "I'm doing a door-to-door, Rhyme. The last wing of the basement."

  "Let ESU handle it." He found his head craning forward tensely as he spoke into the microphone.

  "We need everybody," Sachs whispered. "It's a damn big building." She was in the Tombs now, working her way through the corridors. "Eerie too. Like the music school."

  Mysteriouser and mysteriouser . . .

  "Someday you oughta add a chapter to your book about running crime scenes in spooky locations," she joked out of nervousness. "Okay, I'm going silent now, Rhyme. I'll call you back."

  Rhyme and Cooper returned to the evidence. In the corridor on the way to intake in the Tombs Sachs had recovered the blade from the razor knife and fragments of beef bone and gray sponge--to simulate skull and brain matter--as well as samples of the fake blood: sugar syrup with red food coloring. He'd used his jacket or shirt to wipe up as much of his real blood as he could from the floor and the cuffs but Sachs had run the scene as methodically as ever and she'd recovered enough of a sample for analysis. He'd taken with him the key or lock picks he'd used to undo the cuffs. There was no other helpful evidence in the corridor scene.

  The janitor's closet downstairs where he'd done his quick change yielded more--a paper bag in which he'd hidden the bloody squib and bladder and what he'd been wearing when they'd collared him at Grady's: the gray suit, the white shirt he'd used to wipe up and a pair of Oxford businessman's shoes. Cooper had found
substantial trace evidence on these items: additional latex and makeup, bits of magician's adhesive wax, streaks of ink similar to those they'd found earlier, thick nylon fibers and dried smears of more fake blood.

  The fibers turned out to be charcoal-gray carpet. The phony blood was paint. The databases they had access to didn't give any information about either of these materials so he sent the chemical composition analysis and photos down to the FBI, with an urgent request for sourcing.

  Then an idea occurred to Rhyme. "Kara," he called, seeing the girl sitting next to Mel Cooper, rolling a quarter over her fingers as she stared at the computer image of a fiber. "Can you help us out with one thing?"

  "Sure."

  "Could you go over to the Cirque Fantastique and find Kadesky? Tell him about the escape and see if there's anything else he can remember about Weir. Any illusions he particularly liked, characters or disguises he kept going back to, what sort of routines he repeated most often. . . . Anything that'll give us an idea of what he might look like."

  "Maybe he's got some old clippings or pictures of Weir in costume," she suggested, slinging her black-and-white purse over her shoulder.

  He told her that was a good idea and then returned to the evidence chart, which still stood as testimony to his earlier observation: the more they learned, the less they knew.

  THE CONJURER

  Music School Crime Scene

  * Perp's description: Brown hair, fake beard, no distinguishing, medium build, medium height, age: fifties. Ring and little fingers of left hand fused together. Changed costume quickly to resemble old, bald janitor.

  * No apparent motive.

  * Victim: Svetlana Rasnikov.

  * Full-time music student.

  * Checking family, friends, students, coworkers for possible leads.

  * No boyfriends, no known enemies. Performed at children's birthday parties.

  * Circuit board with speaker attached.

  * Sent to FBI lab, NYC.

  * Digital recorder, probably containing perp's voice. All data destroyed.

  * Voice recorder is a "gimmick." Homemade.

  * Used antique iron handcuffs to restrain victim.

  * Handcuffs are Darby irons. Scotland Yard. Checking with Houdini Museum in New Orleans for leads.

  * Sold to Erick Weir last month. Sent to Denver P.O. box. No other leads.

  * Destroyed victim's watch at exactly 8:00 A.M.

  * Cotton string holding chairs. Generic. Too many sources to trace.

  * Squib for gunshot effect. Destroyed.

  * Too many sources to trace.

  * Fuse. Generic.

  * Too many sources to trace.

  * Responding officers reported flash in air. No trace material recovered.

  * Was from flash cotton or flash paper.

  * Too many sources to trace.

  * Perp's shoes: size 10 Ecco.

  * Silk fibers, dyed gray, processed to a matte finish.

  * From quick-change janitor's outfit.

  * Unsub is possibly wearing brown wig.

  * Red pignut hickory and Parmelia conspersa lichen, both found primarily in Central Park.

  * Dirt impregnated with unusual mineral oil. Sent to FBI for analysis.

  * Tack-Pure oil for saddles and leather.

  * Black silk, 72 x 48". Used as camouflage. Not traceable.

  * Illusionists use this frequently.

  * Wears caps to cover up prints.

  * Magician's finger cups.

  * Traces of latex, castor oil, makeup.

  * Theatrical makeup.

  * Traces of alginate.

  * Used in molding latex appliances.

  * Murder weapon: white silk-knit rope with black silk core.

  * Rope is a magic trick. Color changing. Not traceable.

  * Unusual knot.

  * Sent to FBI and Maritime Museum--no information.

  * Knots are from Houdini routines, virtually impossible to untie.

  * Used disappearing ink on sign-in register.

  East Village Crime Scene

  * Victim Two: Tony Calvert.

  * Makeup artist, theater company.

  * No known enemies.

  * No apparent connection with first victim.

  * No apparent motive.

  * Cause of death:

  * Blunt-object trauma to head followed by postmortem dismemberment with crosscut saw.

  * Perp escaped portraying woman in her 70s. Checking vicinity for discarded costume and other evidence.

  * Nothing recovered.

  * Watch smashed at 12:00 exactly.

  * Pattern? Next victim presumably at 4:00 P.M.

  * Perp hid behind mirror. Not traceable. Fingerprints sent to FBI.

  * No matches.

  * Used cat toy ("feke") to lure victim into alley. Toy is untraceable.

  * Additional mineral oil found, same as at first scene. Awaiting FBI report.

  * Tack-Pure oil for saddles and leather.

  * Additional latex and makeup from finger cups.

  * Additional alginate.

  * Ecco shoes left behind.

  * Dog hairs found in shoes, from three different breeds of dog. Manure too.

  * Manure from horses, not dogs.

  Hudson River and Related Crime Scenes * Victim: Cheryl Marston.

  * Attorney.

  * Divorced but husband not a suspect.

  * No motive.

  * Perp gave name as "John." Had scars on neck and chest. Deformed hand confirmed.

  * Perp did quick change to unbearded businessman in chinos and dress shirt, then biker in denim Harley shirt.

  * Car is in Harlem River.

  * Duct tape gag. Can't be traced.

  * Squibs, same as before. Can't be traced.

  * Chains and snap fixtures, generic, not traceable.

  * Rope, generic, not traceable.

  * Additional makeup, latex and Tack-Pure.

  * Gym bag, made in China, not traceable. Containing: * Traces of date rape drug flunitrazepam.

  * Adhesive magician's wax, not traceable.

  * Brass (?) shavings. Sent to FBI.

  * Consistent with clockwork mechanism, possible bomb timer.

  * Permanent ink, black.

  * Navy-blue windbreaker found, no initials or laundry marks. Containing: * Press pass for CTN cable network, issued to Stanley Saferstein. (He's not suspect--NCIC, VICAP search negative.) * Plastic hotel key card, American Plastic Cards, Akron, Ohio. Model APC-42, negative on prints.

  * CEO is searching for sales records.

  * Dets. Bedding and Saul canvassing hotels.

  * Narrowed down to Chelsea Lodge, Beckman and Lanham Arms.

  * Hotel is Lanham Arms.

  * Restaurant check from Riverside Inn, Bedford Junction, NY, indicating four people ate lunch, table 12, Saturday, two weeks prior. Turkey, meatloaf, steak, daily special. Soft drinks. Staff doesn't know who diners were. (Accomplices?) * Alley where Conjurer was arrested:

  * Picked the cuff locks.

  * Saliva (picks hidden in mouth).

  * No blood type determined.

  * Small razor saw for getting out of restraints (also hidden in mouth).

  * No indication of Officer Burke's whereabouts.

  * Report body somewhere on Upper West Side.

  * Harlem River scene:

  * No evidence on riverbank, except skid marks in mud.

  * Newspaper recovered from the car. Headlines:

  Electrical Breakdown Closes Police Station for Almost 4 Hours New York in Running for GOP Convention

  Parents Protest Poor Security at Girls' School

  Militia Murder Plot Trial Opens Monday

  Weekend Gala at Met to Benefit Charities Spring Entertainment for Kids Young and Old

  Governor, Mayor Meet on New West Side Plan

  Lincoln Rhyme Crime Scene

  * Victim: Lincoln Rhyme.

  * Perp's identity: Erick A. Weir.

  * LKA Las Ve
gas.

  * Burned in fire in Ohio, three years ago. Hasbro and Keller Brothers Circus. Disappeared after. Third-degree burns. Producer was Edward Kadesky.

  * Conviction in New Jersey for reckless endangerment.

  * Obsessed with fire.

  * Manic. Referred to "Revered Audience."

  * Performed dangerous tricks.

  * Married to Marie Cosgrove, killed in fire.

  * He hasn't contacted her family since.

  * Weir's parents dead, no next of kin.

  * No VICAP or NCIC on Weir.

  * Referred to himself as "Wizard of the North."

  * Attacked Rhyme because he had to stop him before Sunday afternoon.

  * Eye color--brown.

  * Psychological profile (per Terry Dobyns, NYPD): Revenge motivates him though he may not realize it. He wants to get even. Angry all the time. By killing he takes away some of the pain because of death of his wife, loss of ability to perform.

  * Weir contacted assistants recently: John Keating and Arthur Loesser, in Nevada. Asking about the fire and people involved with it. Described Weir as crazed, overbearing, manic, dangerous, but brilliant.

  * Killed victims because of what they represented--possibly happy or traumatic moments before the fire.

  * Gasoline-soaked handkerchief, not traceable.

  * Ecco shoes, no trace.

  Detention Center Escape Scenes

  * Squibs and bladder from fake wound--homemade, no source.

  * Artificial blood (sugar syrup + red food coloring), fragments of beef bone, gray sponge to simulate brain, real blood, razor knife blade.

  * DOC officer's Glock.

  * Handcuffs.

  * Unsuccessful attempt to clean up blood.

  * Additional bits of latex and makeup, as at prior scenes.

  * Adhesive wax.

  * Permanent ink, black, similar to that found earlier.

  * Dried artificial blood (paint), sent to FBI.

  * Carpet fibers, sent to FBI.

  Profile as Illusionist

  * Perp will use misdirection against victims and in eluding police.

  * Physical misdirection (for distraction).

  * Psychological (to eliminate suspicion).

  * Escape at music school was similar to Vanished Man illusion routine. Too common to trace.

  * Perp is primarily an illusionist.

  * Talented at sleight of hand.

  * Also knows protean (quick change) magic. Will use breakaway clothes, nylon and silk, bald cap, finger cups and other latex appliances. Could be any age, gender or race.

  * Calvert's death = Selbit's Cutting a Woman in Half routine.

  * Proficient at lock picking (possibly lock "scrubbing").

  * Knows escapism techniques.

  * Experience with animal illusions.