The Vanished Man

Amelia?” one of the techs called from the doorway.
    “Look,” she said angrily, nodding into the corridor. “The M.E. got the body before we processed it. What happened?”
    The crew cut young tech frowned. He glanced at his partner then said, “Uhm, well, the tour doc’s outside. He was the guy we were talking to when you showed up. The one feeding the pigeons. He was waiting to move the body till we were finished.”
    “What’s going on?” Rhyme growled. “I hear voices, Sachs.”
    To him she said, “There’s a crew from the M.E.’s office outside, Rhyme. Sounds like they haven’t picked up the body. What’s—”
    “Oh, Jesus Christ. No!”
    The chill went straight to her soul. “Rhyme, you don’t think—?”
    He barked out, “What do you see, Sachs? What’s the blood spatter look like?”
    She ran to where the shooting had happened and studied the bloodstain on the wall. “Oh, no. It doesn’t look normal for a gunshot, Rhyme.”
    “Brain matter, bone?”
    “Gray matter, yeah. But it doesn’t look right either. There is some bone. Not much, though, for a close-range shot.”
    “Do a presumptive blood test. That’ll be dispositive.”
    She sped back to the doorway.
    “What’s going . . . ?” one of the techs asked but hefell silent as he watched her dig frantically through the suitcases.
    Sachs grabbed the Kastle-Meyer catalytic blood kit then returned to the corridor and took a swab from the wall. She treated this with phenolphthalein and a moment later she had the answer. “I don’t know what it is but it’s definitely not blood.” She glanced down at the ruddy smears on the floor. This, however, looked real. She tested a sample and it showed positive. Then she noticed a bloody razor knife blade in the corner. “Christ, Rhyme he faked the shooting. Cut himself somewhere to bleed for real and fool the guards.”
    “Call security.”
    Sachs yelled, “It’s an escape—have the exits sealed!”
    The detective jogged into the hallway and stared at the floor. Linda Welles joined him, her eyes wide. The momentary relief that she hadn’t in fact been involved in a man’s death faded fast as she realized the far-worse implications of what had happened. “No! He was there. His eyes were open. He looked dead.” Her voice was high, frantic. “I mean, his head . . . it was all bloody. I could see . . . I could see the wound!”
    You could see the illusion of a wound, Sachs thought bitterly.
    The detective called out, “They’ve notified the guards at all the exits. But, Christ, this isn’t a lockdown corridor. As soon as we closed the doors here he could’ve stood up and wandered anywhere. He’s probably stealing a car right now or on the subway to Queens.”
    Amelia Sachs began giving orders. Whatever thedetective’s rank he was so shaken by the escape that he didn’t question her authority. “Get an escape bulletin out now,” she said. “All agencies in the metro area. Federal and state. Don’t forget MTA. The name is Erick Weir. White male. Early fifties. You’ve got the mug shot.”
    “What’s he wearing?” the detective asked Welles and her partner, who both struggled to remember. They gave a rough description.
    Sachs was thinking, though, that it hardly mattered. He’d be in different clothing now. She gazed down the four tentacles of dim corridors she could see from here and observed silhouettes of dozens of people. Guards, janitors, cops . . .
    Or maybe the Conjurer, disguised as one of them.
    But for the moment she left the issue of pursuit in others’ hands and turned back to her own area of expertise: the crime scene, whose search was supposed to be a brief formality but had now become a matter of life and death.

Chapter Thirty-seven
    Making his way cautiously through the basement of the Manhattan Detention Center, Malerick was reflecting on his escape, offering silent patter to his revered audience.
    Let me share with you a trick of the illusionist’s trade.
    To truly fool people it’s not enough to misdirect them during the illusion. This is because when confronted with a phenomenon that defies logic the human brain continues to replay the scene afterward to try to understand what happened. We illusionists call this “reconstruction,” and unless we set up our trick cleverly enough an intelligent, suspicious audience will be fooled only briefly and will figure out our method after the routine is over.
    So how do we trick audiences