The Vanished Man

premise.
    Rhyme nodded. “Dogs!”
    “What?” Sachs asked.
    “Goddamn dogs! Look at the chart. Look at it! The animal hairs and Central Park dirt’re from the dog knoll! Right outside the window.” A fierce nod toward the front of his town house. “He wasn’t checking out Cheryl Marston on the bridle path; he was checking out the circus. The newspaper, the one in his Mazda—look at that headline: ‘Entertainment for Kids Young and Old.’ Call up the paper—see if there’s information about the circus in it. Thom—call Peter! Hurry.”
    The aide was good friends with a reporter for the Times, a young man who’d helped them occasionally in the past. He grabbed the phone and placed the call. Peter Hoddins worked the International desk but it took him less than a minute to find the answer. He relayed the information to Thom, who announced, “The circus was the feature of the story. All sorts of details—hours, acts, bios of the employees. Even a sidebar on security.”
    “Shit,” Rhyme snapped. “He was doing his research. . . . And the press pass? That’d give him access to backstage.” Rhyme was squinting as he looked at the evidence chart. “Yes! I get it now. The victims. What did they represent? Jobs in the circus. A makeup artist. A horseback rider. . . . And the first victim! Yes, she was a student but what was her job ? Singing and entertaining kids—like a clown’d do.”
    “And the murder techniques themselves,” Sachs pointed out. “They were all magic tricks.”
    •   •   •
    “Yep. He’s after your show. Terry Dobyns said his motive was ultimately revenge. Hell, he’s planted a fuel bomb.”
    “My God,” Kadesky said. “There’re two thousand people there! And the show’s starting in ten minutes.”
    At two in the afternoon. . . .
    “The Sunday matinee,” Rhyme added. “Just like in Ohio three years ago.”
    Sellitto grabbed his Motorola and called the officers stationed at the circus. There was no answer. The detective frowned and placed a call on Rhyme’s speakerphone.
    “Officer Koslowski here,” the man answered a moment later.
    Sellitto identified himself and barked, “Why isn’t your radio on, Officer?”
    “Radio? Well, we’re off duty, Lieutenant.”
    “Off duty? You just went on duty.”
    “Well, Detective, we were told to stand down.”
    “You were what? ”
    “Some detective came by a half hour ago and told us we weren’t needed anymore. Said we could take the rest of the day off. I’m on my way to Rockaway Beach with my family. I can—”
    “Describe him.”
    “Fifties. Beard, brown hair.”
    “Where’d he go?”
    “No idea. Walked up to the car, flashed his shield and dismissed us.”
    Sellitto slammed the disconnect. “It’s happening. . . . Oh, man, it’s happening.” He shouted to Sachs, “Call the Sixth, get the Bomb Squad there.” Then hehimself called Central and had Emergency Services and fire trucks sent to the circus.
    Kadesky ran toward the door. “I’ll evacuate the tent.”
    Bell said he was calling Emergency Medical Services and having burn teams established at Columbia Presbyterian.
    “I want more soft-clothed in the park,” Rhyme said. “A lot of them. I have a feeling the Conjurer’s going to be there.”
    “Be there?” Sellitto asked.
    “To watch the fire. He’ll be close. I remember his eyes when he was looking at the flames in my room. He likes to watch fire. No, he wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

Chapter Thirty
    He wasn’t worried so much about the fire itself.
    As Edward Kadesky sprinted the short distance from Lincoln Rhyme’s apartment to the tent of the Cirque Fantastique he was thinking that with new codes and fire retardants, even the worst theater and circus tent fires proceed fairly slowly. No, the real danger is the panic, the tons of human muscles, the stampede that tramples and tears and crushes and suffocates. Bones broken, lungs burst, asphyxiation . . .
    Saving people in a circus disaster means getting them out of the facility without panic. Traditionally, to alert the clowns and acrobats and other hands that a fire has broken out the ringmaster would send a subtle signal to the bandleader, who then launched into the energetic John Philip Sousa march, “Stars and Stripes Forever.” The workers were supposed to take up emergency stations and calmly lead the audience through designated exits (those employees who didn’t simply, of course, abandon ship