The Vanished Man Read online

  "What's the point of that? Does the core make it stronger?" Rhyme asked. "Easier to untie? Harder to untie? What?"

  "No idea."

  "It's getting mysteriouser," Sachs said with a dramatic flair that Rhyme would have found irritating if he hadn't agreed with her.

  "Yup," he confirmed, disconcerted. "That's a new one to me. Let's keep going. I want something familiar, something we can use."

  "And the knot?"

  "Tied by an expert but I don't recognize it," Cooper said.

  "Get a picture of it to the bureau. And . . . don't we know somebody at the Maritime Museum?"

  "They've helped us with knots a few times," Sachs said. "I'll upload a picture to them too."

  A call came in from Tobe Geller at the Computer Crimes Unit at New York's FBI headquarters. "This is fun, Lincoln."

  "Glad we're keeping you amused," Rhyme murmured. "Anything helpful you might be able to tell us about our toy?"

  Geller, a curly-haired young man, was impervious to Rhyme's edge, especially since there was a computer product involved. "It's a digital audio recorder. Fascinating little thing. Your unsub recorded something on it, stored the sounds on a hard drive then programmed it to play back after some delay. We don't know what the sound was--he built in a wiping program so that it destroyed the data."

  "It was his voice," Rhyme muttered. "When he said he had a hostage it was just a recording. Like the chairs. It was to make us think he was still in the room."

  "That makes sense. It had a special speaker--small but excellent bass and midtone range. It'd mimic a human voice pretty well."

  "There's nothing left on the disk?"

  "Nope. Gone for good."

  "Damn. I wanted a voiceprint."

  "Sorry. It's gone."

  Rhyme sighed in frustration and rolled back to the examination trays; it was left to Sachs to tell Geller how much they appreciated the help.

  The team then examined the victim's wristwatch, which had been shattered for reasons none of them could figure out. It yielded no evidence except the time it was broken. Perps occasionally broke watches or clocks at crime scenes after they'd set them to the wrong time to mislead investigators. But this was stopped at close to the actual time of death. What should they make of that?

  Mysteriouser . . .

  As the aide wrote their observations on the whiteboard Rhyme looked over the bag containing the sign-in book. "The missing name in the book." He mused, "Nine people signed but there're only eight names in the log. . . . I think we need an expert here." Rhyme ordered into the microphone, "Command, telephone. Call Kincaid comma Parker."

  Chapter Six On the screen the display showed a 703 area code, Virginia, then the number being dialed.

  A ring. A young girl's voice said, "Kincaid residence."

  "Uhm, yes. Is Parker there? Your father, I mean."

  "Who's calling?"

  "Lincoln Rhyme. In New York."

  "Hold on, please."

  A moment later the laid-back voice of one of the country's preeminent document examiners came on the line. "Hey, Lincoln. Been a month or two, hasn't it?"

  "Busy time," Rhyme offered. "And what're you up to, Parker?"

  "Oh, getting into trouble. Nearly caused an international incident. The British Cultural Society in the District wanted me to authenticate a notebook of King Edward's they'd purchased from a private collector. Note the tense of the verb, Lincoln."

  "They'd already paid for it."

  "Six hundred thousand."

  "Little pricey. They wanted it that badly?"

  "Oh, it had some real nice juicy gossip about Churchill and Chamberlain. Well, not in that sense, of course."

  "Of course not." As usual Rhyme tried to be patient with those from whom he was seeking gratuitous help.

  "I looked it over and what could I do? I had to question it."

  The innocuous verb, from a respected document examiner like Kincaid, was synonymous with branding the diary a bad-ass forgery.

  "Ah, they'll get over it," he continued. "Though, come to think of it, they haven't paid my bill yet. . . . No, honey, we don't make the frosting till the cake cools. . . . Because I said so."

  A single father, Kincaid was the former head of the FBI's documents department at headquarters. He'd left the bureau to run his own document examination service so he could spend more time with his children, Robby and Stephanie.

  "How's Margaret?" Sachs called into the speaker.

  "That you, Amelia?"

  "Yup."

  "She's fine. Haven't seen her for a few days. We took the kids to Planet Play on Wednesday and I was just starting to beat her at laser tag when her pager goes off. She had to go kick in somebody's door and arrest them. Panama or Ecuador or someplace like that. She doesn't give me the details. So, what's up?"

  "We're running a case and I need some help. Here's the scenario: perp was seen writing his name in a security desk sign-in book. Okay?"

  "Got it. And you need the handwriting analyzed?"

  "The problem is we don't have any handwriting."

  "It disappeared?"

  "Yep."

  "And you're sure the writer wasn't faking?"

  "Positive. There was a guard who saw ink going on paper, no question."

  "Anything visible now?"

  "Nothing."

  Kincaid gave a grim laugh. "That's smart. So there was no record of the perp entering the building. And then somebody else wrote their name over the blank space and ruined whatever impression there might've been of his signature."

  "Right."

  "Anything on the sheet below the top one?"

  Rhyme glanced at Cooper, who shone a bright light at an acute angle on the second sheet in the log--this, rather than covering the page with pencil lead, was the preferred method to raise impression evidence. He shook his head.

  "Nothing," Rhyme told the document examiner. Then asked, "So how'd he pull that off?"

  "He Ex-Laxed it," Kincaid announced.

  "How's that?" Sellitto called.

  "Used disappearing ink. We call it Ex-Laxing in the business. The old Ex-Lax contained phenolphthalein. Before it was banned by the FDA. You'd dissolve a pill in alcohol and make a blue ink. It had an alkaline pH. Then you'd write something. After a while, exposure to the air would make the blue disappear."

  "Sure," said Rhyme, recalling his basic chemistry. "The carbon dioxide in the air turns the ink acidic and that neutralizes the color."

  "Exactly. You don't see phenolphthalein much anymore. But you can do the same thing with thymolphthalein indicator and sodium hydroxide."

  "Can you buy this stuff anyplace in particular?"

  "Hm," Kincaid considered. "Well. . . . Just a minute, honey. Daddy's on the phone. . . . No, it's okay. All cakes look lopsided when they're in the oven. I'll be there soon. . . . Lincoln? What I was going to say was that it's a great idea in theory but when I was in the bureau there were never any perps or spies who actually used disappearing ink. It's more of a novelty, you know. Entertainers'd use it."

  Entertainment, Rhyme thought grimly, looking at the board on which were taped the pictures of poor Svetlana Rasnikov. "Where would our doer find ink like that?"

  "Most likely toy stores or magic shops."

  Interesting . . .

  "Okay, well, that's helpful, Parker."

  "Come and visit sometime," Sachs called. "And bring the kids."

  Rhyme grimaced at the invitation. He whispered to Sachs, "And why don't you invite all their friends too. The whole school . . ."

  Laughing, she shushed him.

  After he disconnected the call Rhyme said grumpily, "The more we learn, the less we know."

  Bedding and Saul called in and reported that Svetlana seemed to be well liked at the music school and had no enemies there. Her part-time job wasn't likely to have produced any stalkers either; she led sing-alongs at kids' birthday parties.

  A package arrived from the medical examiner's office. Inside was a p
lastic evidence bag containing the old handcuffs the victim had been restrained with. They were unopened, as Rhyme had ordered. He'd told the M.E. to compress the victim's hands to remove them since drilling out the locks could destroy valuable trace.

  "Never seen anything like this," Cooper said, holding them up, "outside of a movie."

  Rhyme agreed. They were antique, heavy and made of unevenly forged iron.

  Cooper brushed and tapped all around the lock mechanisms but he found no significant trace. The fact they were antique, though, was encouraging because it would limit the sources they might've come from. Rhyme told Cooper to photograph the cuffs and print out pictures to show to dealers.

  Sellitto received another phone call. He listened for a moment then, looking bewildered, said, "Impossible. . . . You're sure? . . . Yeah, okay. Thanks." Hanging up, the detective glanced at Rhyme. "I don't get it."

  "What's that?" Rhyme asked, in no mood for any more mysteries.

  "That was the administrator of the music school. There is no janitor."

  "But the patrol officers saw him," Sachs pointed out.

  "The cleaning staff doesn't work on Saturday. Only weekday evenings. And none of 'em look like the guy the respondings saw."

  No janitor?

  Sellitto looked through his notes. "He was right outside the second door, sweeping up. He--"

  "Oh, goddamn," Rhyme snapped. "It was him!" A glance at the detective. "The janitor looked completely different from the perp, right?"

  Sellitto consulted his notebook. "He was in his sixties, bald, no beard, wearing gray coveralls."

  "Gray coveralls!" Rhyme shouted.

  "Yeah."

  "That's the silk fiber. It was a costume."

  "What're you talking about?" Cooper asked.

  "Our unsub killed the student. When he was surprised by the respondings he blinded them with the flash and ran into the performance space, set up the fuses and the digital recorder to make them think he was still inside, changed into the janitor outfit and ran out the second door."

  "But he didn't just strip off throwaway sweats like some chain-snatcher on the A train, Linc," the rotund policeman pointed out. "How the hell could he've done it? He was out of sight for, what, sixty seconds?"

  "Fine. If you have an explanation that doesn't involve divine intervention I'm willing to listen."

  "Come on. There's no fucking way."

  "No way?" Rhyme mused cynically as he wheeled closer to the whiteboard on which Thom had taped the printouts of the digital photos Sachs had taken of the footprints. "Then how 'bout some evidence?" He examined the perp's footprints and then the ones that she'd lifted in the corridor near where the janitor had been.

  "Shoes," he announced.

  "They're the same?" the detective asked.

  "Yep," Sachs said, walking to the board. "Ecco, size ten."

  "Christ," Sellitto muttered.

  Rhyme asked, "Okay, what do we have? A perp in his early fifties, medium build, medium height and beardless, two deformed fingers, probably has a record 'cause he's hiding his prints--and that's all we goddamn know." But then Rhyme frowned. "No," he muttered darkly, "that's not all we know. There's something else. He had a change of clothes with him, murder weapons. . . . He's an organized offender." He glanced at Sellitto and added, "He's going to do this again."

  Sachs nodded her grim agreement.

  Rhyme gazed at Thom's flowing lettering on the evidence whiteboards and he wondered: What ties this all together?

  The black silk, the makeup, the costume change, the disguises, the flashes and the pyrotechnics.

  The disappearing ink.

  Rhyme said slowly, "I'm thinking that our boy's got some magic training."

  Sachs nodded. "Makes sense."

  Sellitto nodded. "Okay. Maybe. But whatta we do now?"

  "Seems obvious to me," Rhyme said. "Find our own."

  "Our own what?" Sellitto asked.

  "Magician of course."

  *

  "Do it again."

  She'd done it eight times so far.

  "Again?"

  The man nodded.

  And so Kara did it again.

  The Triple Handkerchief Release--developed by the famous magician and teacher Harlan Tarbell--is a surefire audience-pleaser. It involves separating three different colored silks that seem hopelessly knotted together. It's a hard trick to perform smoothly but Kara felt good about how it'd gone.

  David Balzac didn't, however. "Your coins were talking." He sighed--harsh criticism, meaning that an illusion or trick was clumsy and obvious. The heavyset older man with a white mane of hair and tobacco-stained goatee shook his head in exasperation. He removed his thick glasses, rubbed his eyes and replaced the specs.

  "I think it was smooth," she protested. "It seemed smooth to me."

  "But you weren't the audience. I was. Now again."

  They stood on a small stage in the back of Smoke & Mirrors, the store that Balzac had bought after he'd retired from the international magic and illusion circuit ten years ago. The grungy place sold magic supplies, rented costumes and props and presented free, amateur magic shows for customers and locals. A year and a half ago Kara, doing freelance editing for Self magazine, had finally worked up her courage to get up on stage--Balzac's reputation had intimidated her for months. The aging magician had watched her act and called her into his office afterward. The Great Balzac himself had told her in his gruff but silky voice that she had potential. She could be a great illusionist--with the proper training--and proposed that she come work in the shop; he'd be her mentor and teacher.

  Kara had moved to New York from the Midwest years before and was savvy about city life; she knew immediately what "mentor" might entail, especially when he was a quadruple divorce and she was an attractive woman forty years younger than he. But Balzac was a renowned magician--he'd been a regular on Johnny Carson and had been a headliner in Las Vegas for years. He'd toured the world dozens of times and knew virtually every major illusionist alive. Illusion was her passion and this was a chance of a lifetime. She accepted on the spot.

  At the first session her guard was up and she was ready to repel boarders. The lesson indeed turned out to be upsetting to her--though for an entirely different reason.

  He tore her to shreds.

  After an hour of criticizing virtually every aspect of her technique Balzac had looked at her pale, tearful face and barked, "I said you have potential. I didn't say you were good. If you want somebody to polish your ego you're in the wrong place. Now, are you going to run home crying to mommy or are you going to get back to work?"

  They got back to work.

  And so began an eighteen-month love-hate relationship between mentor and apprentice, which kept her up until the early hours of the morning six or seven days a week, practicing, practicing, practicing. While Balzac had had many assistants in his years as a performer he'd been a mentor to only two apprentices and in both cases, it seemed, the young men had proved to be disappointments. He wasn't going to let that happen with Kara.

  Friends sometimes asked her where her love of--and obsession with--illusion came from. They were probably expecting a movie-of-the-week tormented childhood filled with abusive parents and teachers or, at least, a little slip of a mousy girl escaping from the cruel cliques at school into the world of fantasy. But they got Normal Girl instead--a cheerful A student, gymnast, cookie baker and school-choir singer, who started on the path of entertainment undramatically by attending a Penn and Teller performance in Cleveland with her grandparents, followed a month later by a coincidental family trip to Vegas for one of her father's turbine-manufacturing conventions, the trip exposing her to the thrill of flying tigers and fiery illusions, the exhilaration of magic.

  That's all it took. At thirteen she founded the magic club at JFK Junior High and was soon sinking every penny of baby-sitting money into magic magazines, how-to videos and packaged tricks. She later expanded her entrepreneurial efforts to yard wor
k and snow shoveling in exchange for rides to the Big Apple Circus and Cirque du Soleil whenever they were appearing within a fifty-mile radius.

  Which is not to say that there wasn't an important motive that set--and kept--her on this course. No, what drove Kara could be easily found in the blinks of delighted surprise on the faces of the audience--whether they were two dozen of her relatives at Thanksgiving dinner (a show complete with quick-change routines and a levitating cat, though without the trapdoor her father wouldn't let her cut in the living room floor) or the students and parents at the high school senior talent show, where she did two encores to a standing ovation.

  Life with David Balzac, though, was quite different from that triumphant show; over the past year and half she sometimes felt she'd lost whatever talent she'd once had.

  But just as she'd be about to quit he'd nod and offer the faintest of smiles. Several times he actually said, "That was a tight trick."

  At moments like that her world was complete.

  Much of the rest of her life, though, blew away like dust as she spent more and more time at the store, handling the books and inventory for him, the payroll, serving as webmaster for the store's website. Since Balzac wasn't paying her much she needed other work and she took jobs that were at least marginally compatible with her English degree--writing content for other magic and theater websites. Then about a year ago her mother's condition had began to worsen and only-child Kara spent her little remaining free time with the woman.

  An exhausting life.

  But she could handle it for now. In a few years Balzac would pronounce her fit to perform and off she'd go with his blessing and his contacts with producers around the world.

  Hold tight, girl, as Jaynene might say, and stay on top of the galloping horse.

  Kara now finished Tarbell's three-silk trick again. Tapping his cigarette ash onto the floor, Balzac frowned. "Left index finger slightly higher."

  "You could see the tie?"

  "If I couldn't see it," he snapped angrily, "why would I ask you to lift your finger higher? Try again."

  Once more.

  The goddamn index finger slightly goddamn higher.

  Wshhhhhh . . . the entangled silks separated and flew into the air like triumphant flags.

  "Ah," Balzac said. A faint nod.

  Not traditional praise exactly. But Kara had learned to make do with ah's.

  She put the trick away and stepped behind the counter in the cluttered business area of the store to log in the merchandise that had arrived in Friday's afternoon shipment.