The Vanished Man

by Jeffery Deaver

  * Used mentalism to get information on victim.

  * Used sleight of hand to drug her.

  * Tried to kill third victim with Houdini escape. Water Torture Cell.

  * Ventriloquism.

  * Razor blades.

  * Familiar with Burning Mirror routine. Very dangerous, rarely performed now.

  *

  The Cirque Fantastique was coming alive, an hour before that night's performance.

  Kara walked past the banner of Arlecchino and noticed a police car, which Lincoln Rhyme had ordered to remain after the scare that afternoon. Feeling a camaraderie with them since she herself had been playing cop, she smiled and waved to the officers, who, though they didn't know her, waved back.

  No one was taking tickets yet so Kara wandered inside and made her way backstage. She noticed a young man holding a clipboard. An employee pass sat high on his belt like Amelia's gun.

  "Excuse me," she said.

  "Yes?" he replied in a thick French or French-Canadian accent.

  "I'm looking for Mr. Kadesky."

  "He is not here. I am one of his assistants."

  "Where is he?"

  "Not here. Who are you?"

  "I'm working with the police. Mr. Kadesky met with them earlier. They have some more questions for him."

  The young man glanced at her chest, presumably, though not necessarily, looking for ID.

  "Uh-huh. Ah. Police. Well, he's at dinner. He will be back soon."

  "Do you know where he's eating?" she asked.

  "No. You'll have to leave. You can't be back here."

  "I only need to see him--"

  "Do you have a ticket?"

  "No, I--"

  "Then you can't wait. You must leave. He never said anything about the police."

  "Well, I really need to see him," she said firmly to the man with Gallic good looks and a chill demeanor.

  "Really, you must go. You can wait outside for him."

  "I might miss him."

  "I'll have to call a guard," he threatened in his thick accent. "I will do that."

  "I'll buy a ticket," she said.

  "They're sold out. And even if you could buy one you could not be back here. I will walk you out."

  He herded her out the main door, where the ticket-takers were now on duty. Outside she paused and pointed over his shoulder toward a trailer on which was a sign, BOX OFFICE. "That's where I could buy a ticket?"

  A demi-sneer crossed his face. "That's what a box office is. But, as I said, there are no more tickets. You can call Mr. Kadesky's company if you need to ask him something."

  After he'd gone, Kara waited a moment or two, then turned the corner of the tent and proceeded to the stage entrance in back. She smiled at the security guard and he smiled back, giving only a cursory glance at her belt, where now sat the French-Canadian's employee pass, which she'd easily unhooked from his belt when she'd pointed and asked the foolish, but quite misdirecting, question about the box office.

  Now, there's a rule for you, she reflected: Never fuck with somebody who knows sleight of hand.

  Inside the backstage portion of the tent once again she hid the badge in her pocket and found a friendlier employee. The woman, Katherine Tunney, nodded sympathetically when Kara explained what she was doing there--that a former illusionist wanted for murder had been identified as someone Mr. Kadesky had worked with a long time ago. The woman had heard about the killings and she invited Kara to wait until the producer returned from dinner. Katherine gave Kara a pass to sit in one of the VIP boxes and then left on another errand, promising that she'd tell the guards to make sure Mr. Kadesky came to see her as soon as he returned.

  On her way to the box seat her pager sounded, an urgent beeping.

  She gasped when she saw the number, ran to a bank of temporary pay phones and, hand shaking, made the call.

  "Stuyvesant Manor," the voice said.

  "Jaynene Williams, please."

  A huge wait.

  " 'Lo?"

  "It's me. Kara. Is Mom okay?"

  "Oh, she's fine, girl. But I wanted to tell you--don't get your hopes up. It might be nothin'. But a few minutes ago she woke up and asked for you. She knows it's Sunday night and she remembered you coming by earlier."

  "You mean, 'me,' the real me?"

  "Yep, your real name. Then she gave this little frown and said, 'Unless all she goes by is that crazy stage name of hers, Kara.' "

  My God. . . . Could she be back?

  "And she knew me and she asked where you were. Said she wanted to tell you something."

  Kara's heart accelerated.

  Tell me something . . .

  "Better get over here soon, honey. Might last. But it might not. You know how that goes."

  "I'm in the middle of something, Jaynene. I'll get there as soon as I can."

  They hung up and, frantic, Kara returned to her seat. The tension was unbearable. Right this instant her mother might be asking where her daughter was. Frowning and disappointed that the girl wasn't there.

  Please, she prayed, looking again toward the doorway for Kadesky.

  Nothing.

  Wishing she could tap a hickory magic wand on the battered metal railing in front of her, point it at the doorway and materialize the producer.

  Please, she thought again, aiming the imaginary wand toward the doorway. Please . . .

  Nothing for a moment. Then several figures entered. None of them was Kadesky, though. They were just three women dressed in medieval costumes and wearing masks whose forlorn expressions were belied by the buoyant spring in the step of actors about to begin their evening's performance.

  *

  Roland Bell was standing in one of the canyons of downtown Manhattan: Centre Street between the grimy, towering Criminal Courts building, crowned by the Bridge of Sighs, and the nondescript office building across the street from it.

  Still no sign of Charles Grady's Volvo.

  The lighthouse rotation once again. Where, where, where?

  A honk nearby, in the direction of the entrance to the bridge. A shout.

  Bell turned and jogged a few steps toward the sounds, wondering: Misdirection?

  But, no, it was just a traffic dispute.

  He turned back, toward the entrance to the Criminal Courts building, and found himself looking right at Charles Grady, who was strolling casually up the street, a block away. The prosecutor was walking with his head down, lost in his thoughts. The detective sprinted toward the man, calling, "Charles! Get down! Weir's escaped!"

  Grady paused, frowning.

  "Down!" Bell called breathlessly.

  The alarmed man crouched on the sidewalk, between two parked cars. "What happened?" he shouted. "My family!"

  "I've got people with them," the detective said. Then, to the pedestrians: "Everybody! Police action here! Clear the street!"

  People scattered instantly.

  "My family!" Grady called desperately. "You're sure?"

  "They're fine."

  "But Weir--"

  "Faked the shooting in detention. He's out and's somewhere around here. I've got an armored van on its way."

  Turning again, squinting, surveying the scenery.

  Roland Bell finally reached Grady and stood over him, his back to the dark windows of the government office building across the street.

  "Just stay right where you are, Charles," Bell said. "We'll get out of this fine." And pulled his handy-talkie off his belt.

  *

  What was this?

  Hobbs Wentworth watched his target below him--the prosecutor--cowering on the sidewalk behind a man in a sportscoat, a cop obviously.

  The crosshairs of Hobbs's 'scope poked around the officer's back, searching unsuccessfully for an unprotected shot at Grady.

  The prosecutor was low, the cop standing. It seemed to Hobbs that if he shot through the cop's lower back he'd probably hit Grady in the upper chest, since he was crouching. But the risk was that the shot would be deflec
ted and Grady'd only be wounded and fall to safety behind a car.

  Well, he had to do something pretty soon. The cop was talking on his radio. There'd be a hundred more of 'em here in a minute. Come on, sharp operator, he said to himself. Whatcha gonna do?

  Below him the cop was still looking around, covering Grady, who squatted like a bitch retriever peeing.

  All right. What he'd do was shoot the cop in the upper leg, the thigh. That way, most likely, the cop would fall backward, exposing the prosecutor. The Colt was semiauto so he could fire five shots in two seconds. Not perfect but it was the best Hobbs could think of.

  He'd give the cop a moment or two longer to step aside or sway out of the way.

  Both eyes open as the right one stared through the 'scope, painting the back of the detective with the crosshairs and thinking that when he got back to Canton Falls he'd make up a Bible story about this. Jesus would play his role and would be armed with a kick-ass compound bow, about to ambush a bunch of Roman soldiers, who'd been torturing Christians. Julius Caesar would be hiding behind one soldier and thinking he was safe but Jesus would shoot through the soldier and kill the son-of-a-bitch.

  Good story. The kids'd love it.

  The cop was still huddled over the prosecutor.

  Well, that's it, Hobbs thought, clicking off the safety of the big Colt. No time left. Burn in brimstone, Christ-killing Romans.

  He centered the crosshairs on the back of the cop's leg and began to apply slow pressure on the trigger, thinking that his only regret was that the officer was white, not black.

  But one thing Hobbs Wentworth'd learned in life: you take your targets the way you find 'em.

  Forty Roland Bell smelled the distinctive plastic/sweat/metal scent of the Motorola handy-talkie as he clutched it to his face.

  "ESU Four, you 'bout ready, K?" he drawled into the mike.

  "Roger that, K," one of them replied.

  "Okay, now--"

  Which is when the muffled cracks of multiple shots resounded through the canyon of the street.

  Bell jumped.

  "Gunshots!" Charles Grady cried. "I heard shots! Are you hit?"

  "Just stay down," Bell said as he dropped into a crouch. He spun around, lifting his gun and squinting hard at the government office building across the street.

  He was counting furiously.

  "Got the location," he called into the radio. "I make it the third floor, fifth office from the north end of the building." Then Bell examined the glass. "Ouch."

  "Say again, K?" one of the officers called.

  "I said, 'Ouch.' "

  "Uhm. Roger. Out."

  Grady, lying on the sidewalk, said, "What's going on?" He started to get up.

  "Sit tight there," the detective told him, standing up cautiously. Turning now from the window and scanning the sidewalk around him. There was a possibility that more shooters were nearby. A moment later an armored Emergency Services van pulled up and five seconds after that Bell and Grady were inside, squealing away from the attempted hit and taking the prosecutor back to the Upper East Side and his family.

  Bell glanced behind him to see more ESU troopers streaming into the building across the street from the courthouse.

  Don't worry. . . . He'll find us.

  Well, he sure as hell had.

  Bell had concluded that the best way to try to hit Grady would be from the office building across the street. It was most likely that the killer would break into one of the lower offices facing the sidewalk. The roof was unlikely because it was monitored by dozens of CCTV cameras. Bell had remained in the open as bait because of something he knew about this particular building from the hostage situation he'd run there: the windows, as in many of the newer government buildings here, couldn't be opened and were made from bomb-proof glass.

  There'd been a small risk, he supposed, that the shooter would use armor-piercing rounds, which might penetrate the inch-thick glass. But Bell had recalled an expression he'd heard during a case a couple of years ago: "God don't give out certain."

  He'd taken the chance of luring the sniper into shooting, in hopes that the bullet would spider the window and reveal the man's location.

  And his idea had worked--though with a variation, as Bell had mentioned to the ESU team. Ouch. . . .

  "ESU Four to Bell. It's Haumann. You were right, K."

  "Go ahead, K."

  The tactical commander continued, "We're inside. Scene is secure. Only what do they call those? The Darwin Awards? You know, where criminals do stupid things, K?"

  "Roger that," Bell responded. "Where'd he hit himself, K?"

  Bell had spotted the shooter's location not because of cracked glass but because of a large spatter of blood on the window. The ESU chief explained that the copper-jacketed slugs that the man had fired toward Bell had ricocheted off the glass, shattered and struck the shooter himself in a half-dozen places, most significantly his groin, where they apparently severed a large artery or vein. The man had bled out by the time the ESU team had made its way to the office.

  "Tell me it's Weir, K," Bell said.

  "Nup. Sorry. It's somebody named Hobbs Went-worth. Address, Canton Falls."

  Bell scowled angrily. So Weir and maybe others working with him were still around. He asked, "Find anything that'll give us a clue what Weir's up to or where he might be?"

  "Negative," said the raspy-voiced commander. "Only his ID. And, get this, a book of Bible stories for kids." There was a pause. "Hate to say it but we got another victim, Roland. He killed a woman to get into the building, looks like. . . . Okay, we're going to secure the place and keep looking for Weir. Out."

  The detective shook his head and said to Grady, "No sign of him."

  Except that, of course, that was the whole problem. Maybe they had found plenty of signs of Weir, maybe they'd even found Weir himself--in the form of another cop, a med tech, an ESU officer, a reporter, a soft-clothed detective, a passerby or homeless man--and they simply didn't know it.

  *

  Through the yellowing window in the interview room Andrew Constable could see the grim face of a large black guard peer in and look at him. The face disappeared as the man stepped away from the door.

  Constable rose from the metal table and walked past his lawyer to the window. He looked outside and saw two guards in the hall, speaking gravely to each other.

  All right then.

  "What's that?" Joseph Roth asked his client.

  "Nothing," Constable responded. "I didn't say anything."

  "Oh, I thought you did."

  "No."

  Though he wondered if he had. Made some comment, uttered a prayer.

  He returned to the table, where the lawyer looked up from a pad of yellow foolscap that contained a half-dozen names and phone numbers, which Constable's associates in Canton Falls had just provided in response to their questions about what Weir might have planned, where he might be.

  Roth looked uneasy. They'd just learned that a man with a rifle had made an attempt on Grady's life in front of the building a few minutes ago. But it hadn't been Weir, who was still unaccounted for. The lawyer said, "I'm worried that Grady'll be too spooked to deal with us. I think we should call him at home and tell him what we've found." Tapping the sheets. "Or at least give this stuff to that detective. What was his name? Bell, right?"

  "That's it," Constable said.

  Moving his pudgy finger over the sheet of names and numbers, Roth said, "You think anybody here'll know something specific about Weir? That's what they'll want, something specific."

  Constable leaned forward and looked at the list. Then at his lawyer's watch. He shook his head slowly. "I doubt it," he said.

  "You . . . You doubt it?"

  "Yeah. See this first number?"

  "Yeah."

  "It's the dry cleaner on Harrison Street in Canton Falls. And the one below it's the IGA. The next one's the Baptist church. And those names?" the prisoner continued. "Ed Davis, Brett Samuels, Joe Ja
mes Watkins?"

  "Right," Roth said. "Jeddy Barnes' associates."

  Constable gave a chuckle. "Gosh no. They're all made up."

  "What?" Roth frowned.

  Leaning close to his lawyer, the prisoner stared into the man's confused eyes. "I'm saying that those names and numbers're fake."

  "I don't understand."

  Constable whispered, "Of course you don't, you pathetic fucking Jew," and slammed his fists into the side of the shocked lawyer's face before Roth could raise his arms to protect himself.

  Chapter Forty-one

  Andrew Constable was a strong man, strong from hiking to remote hunting and fishing grounds, from dressing deer and sawing bones, from chopping wood.

  Paunchy Joe Roth was no match for him. The lawyer tried to rise and call for help but Constable struck him hard in the throat. The man's shout became a gurgling sound.

  The prisoner pulled him to the floor and began pummeling the bleeding man with his cuffed fists. In a moment Roth was unconscious, his face swollen like a melon. Constable dragged him back to the table and propped him up on it, his back to the door. If one of the guards happened to glance in again it would look as if he were reading the papers, head down. Constable bent down, pulled off one of the lawyer's shoes and socks and wiped the blood off the table as best he could and covered the rest with documents and pads of paper. He'd kill the lawyer later. For now, for a few minutes at least, he needed this innocent-looking tableau.

  A few minutes--until he was free.

  Freedom . . .

  Which was the whole point of Erick Weir's plan.

  Constable's best friend, Jeddy Barnes, the second in command of the Patriot Assembly, had hired Weir not to kill Grady but to break the prisoner out of the notoriously secure Manhattan Detention Center, transport him to freedom over the Bridge of Sighs and ultimately into the New England wilderness, where the Assembly could resume its mission to wage war against the impure, the unclean, the ignorant. To rid the land of blacks, gays, Jews, Hispanics, foreigners--the "Them" that Constable railed against in his weekly lectures at the Patriot Assembly and in the secret websites subscribed to by the thousands of right-thinking citizens around the country.

  Constable now rose, walked to the door, looked out again. The guards had no clue about what had just happened inside the interview room.

  It occurred to the prisoner that he ought to have a weapon of some kind and so he lifted a metal mechanical pencil from the lawyer's bloody shirt and then nestled the butt of the pencil in the wadded-up sock to protect his palm. The sharp point would make a fine stabbing implement.