The Vanished Man

couple of them saw you and we had Kara nail you with the chip. And presto—” Rhyme smiled at his choice of word. “Here we are.”
    “But the fire . . . I saw it!”
    Rhyme said to Sachs, “See what I keep saying aboutevidence versus witnesses? He saw the fire; therefore it had to be real.” To Loesser he said, “But it wasn’t real now, was it?”
    Sachs said, “What you saw was smoke from a couple of National Guard smoke grenades we mounted on the top of the tent with a crane. The flames? From a propane burner at the stage door where the ambulance was. Then they backlit a couple more burners in the ring and projected the shadows of the flames onto the side of the tent.”
    “I heard screams,” Loesser whispered.
    “Oh, that was Kara’s idea. She thought we could have Kadesky tell the audience they were taking an intermission from the show so a movie studio could shoot a scene in the tent—about a fire in a circus. He had everybody start screaming on cue. They loved it. They got to be extras.”
    “No,” the Conjurer whispered. “It was—”
    “—an illusion,” Rhyme said to him. “It was all an illusion.”
    Some sleight of mind from the Immobilized Man.
    “I better run the scene here,” Sachs said, nodding around the room, and frowning.
    “Sure, sure, Sachs. What was I thinking of? Here we are sitting around chatting and contaminating a crime scene.”
    With multiple cuffs and shackles binding him and an officer on either side, the killer was led out the door, far less cocky than the last time he’d been led down to detention.
    As two ESU officers were about to schlepp Rhyme outside once more, Lon Sellitto’s phone rang. He tookthe call. “She’s right here. . . .” A glance at Sachs. “You want to talk to her . . . ?” Then he shook his head at her and continued to listen, looking grave. “Okay, I’ll tell her.” He hung up.
    “That was Marlow,” he said to Sachs.
    The head of Patrol Services. What was up? the criminalist wondered, seeing the troubled look on Sellitto’s face.
    The rumpled detective continued, speaking to Sachs, “He wants you downtown tomorrow at ten A.M. It’s about your promotion.” Sellitto then frowned. “There was something else he wanted me to tell you, something about your score on the test. What was it?” He shook his head, stared at the ceiling. Clearly troubled. “What was it?”
    Sachs looked on impassively, though Rhyme observed a fingernail make a brief assault on the cuticle of her thumb.
    Then the detective snapped his fingers. “Oh, yeah, now I remember. He said you got the third highest score in the history of the department.” A frown filled his face and he looked at Rhyme. “You know what this means, don’tcha? Christ have mercy—now there’ll be no living with her.”
    •   •   •
    Jogging, breathless.
    The corridor was a mile long.
    Kara sprinted along the gray linoleum with only one thing in her mind: not the late Erick Weir or his psychotic assistant, Art Loesser, not the brilliance of the fire illusion at the Cirque Fantastique. No, all she thought was: Am I in time?
    Down the dim corridor. Footsteps pounding on the floor.
    Past doorways closed and doorways open. Hearing bits of TV and music, hearing farewell conversation as families prepared to leave at the end of Sunday visiting hours.
    Hearing her own hollow footsteps.
    She paused outside the room. Inhaled a dozen deep breaths to steady her voice and, more nervous than she’d ever been going onstage, stepped into the room.
    A pause. Then: “Hi, Mum.”
    Her mother turned away from the TV. She blinked in surprise and smiled. “Why, look who it is. Hello, dear.”
    Oh, my God, Kara thought, looking at the bright eyes. She’s back! She’s really back.
    She walked over and hugged the woman then pulled the chair closer. “How are you?”
    “Fine. Little chilly tonight.”
    “I’ll close the window.” Kara rose and pulled it shut.
    “I thought you weren’t going to make it, honey.”
    “Busy night. I’ll have to tell you what I’ve been up to, Mum. You won’t believe it.”
    “I can’t wait.”
    Excitedly Kara asked, “You want some tea or something?” She felt a fierce urgency to pour out all the details of her life in the past six months, to ramble. But she told herself to slow down; gushing, she sensed, could easily overwhelm her mother, who seemed immensely fragile at the moment.
    “Nope, not a thing, dear. . . . Could you shut