The Vanished Man

Metamorphoses. . . . It’s a book about change. About people becoming other people, animals, trees, inanimate objects. Some of Ovid’s stories are tragic, some enthralling but all of them have one thing in common.” A pause and then she said in a loud voice, “Magic!” With a burst of light and a cloud of smoke she vanished.
    For the next forty minutes Kara captivated the audience with a series of illusions and sleight-of-hand tricks based on a few of the poems in the book. As for catching her moves, Rhyme gave up on that completely. True, he was lost in the drama of her stories. But even when he pulled himself back from her spell and concentrated on her hands he couldn’t spot her method once. After a long ovation and an encore, during which she quick-changed into a tiny elderly woman and back again (“Young to old . . . old to young”), she left the stage. Five minutes later Kara emerged in jeans and a white blouse and stepped into the audience to say hello to friends.
    A shop clerk laid out a table of jug wine, coffee and soda, cookies.
    “No scotch?” Rhyme asked, looking over the cheap spread.
    “Sorry, sir,” the bearded young man replied.
    Sachs, armed with wine, nodded at Kara, who joined them. “Hey, this is great. I never thought I’d see you guys here.”
    “What can I say?” Sachs offered. “Fantastic.”
    “Excellent,” Rhyme said to her then turned back to the bar. “Maybe there’s some whisky in the back, Thom.”
    Thom nodded at Rhyme and said to Kara, “Can you transform dispositions?” He took two glasses of Chardonnay, slipped a straw in one and held it out for his boss. “This or nothing, Lincoln.”
    He took a sip then said, “I liked the young-old ending. Didn’t expect it. I was worried you were going to become a butterfly at the end. Cliché, you know.”
    “You were supposed to be worried. With me, expect the unexpected. Sleight of mind, remember?”
    “Kara,” Sachs said, “you have to try out for the Cirque Fantastique.”
    The woman laughed but said nothing.
    “No, I’m serious—this was professional quality,” Sachs insisted.
    Rhyme could tell that Kara didn’t want to pursue the issue. She said lightly, “I’m right on schedule. There’s no hurry. A lot of people make the mistake of jumping too fast.”
    “Let’s get some food,” Thom suggested. “I’m starving. Jaynene, you come too.”
    The large woman said she’d love to and suggested a new place near the Jefferson Market at Sixth and Tenth.
    Kara demurred, though, saying that she had to stay and work on some of the routines she’d slipped up on during the performance.
    “Girl, no way,” the nurse said, frowning. “You gotta work?”
    “It’ll only be a couple of hours. That friend of Mr. Balzac’s doing some private show tonight and he’s going to close up the store early to go watch it.” Kara hugged Sachs and said goodbye. They exchangedphone numbers, each promising they’d be in touch. Rhyme thanked her again for her help in the Weir case. “We couldn’t’ve caught him without you.”
    “We’ll come see you in Las Vegas,” Thom called.
    Rhyme started to pilot the Storm Arrow toward the front of the store. As he did he glanced to his left and saw Balzac’s still eyes watching him from the back room. The illusionist then turned to Kara as she joined him. Immediately, in his presence, she was a very different woman, timid and self-conscious.
    Metamorphosis, Rhyme thought, and he watched Balzac slowly push the door closed, shutting out the rest of the world from the sorcerer and his apprentice.

Chapter Thirty-five
    “I’m gonna say it again. You can have a lawyer, you want one.”
    “I understand that,” Erick Weir muttered in his breathy whisper.
    They were in Lon Sellitto’s office at One Police Plaza. It was a small room, mostly gray, decorated with—as the detective himself might’ve put it in a report—“one infant picture, one male child picture, one adult female picture, one scenic lake picture of indeterminate locale, one plant—dead.”
    Sellitto had interviewed hundreds of suspects in this office. The only difference between them and the present suspect was that Weir was double-shackled to the gray chair across the desk. And an armed patrol officer stood behind him.
    “You understand?”
    “I said I did,” Weir announced.
    And so the interview began.
    Unlike Rhyme, who specialized in forensics, Detective First-Grade Lon Sellitto was a