Free The Vanished Man by Jeffery Deaver

him!" A glance at the detec
     
     
tive. "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 interven
     
     
tion I'm willing to listen."
     
     
"Come on. There's no fucking way."
     
     
"No way?" Rhyme mused cynically as he wheeled closer to the white
     
     
board on which Thorn 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 Thorn'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 sure-fire 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 sighedharsh 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 truck 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. 1 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.