The Vanished Man

Seemed like it. . . . This is some gorgeous day, hm? Sephie and me, we’re gonna take her walking in the courtyard later if she’s awake. She likes it. She always does better after that.”
    “I’ve gotta get to work,” Kara told the nurse. “Hey,I’m doing a show tomorrow. At the store. Remember where it is?”
    “Sure do. What time?”
    “Four. Come on by.”
    “I’m off early tomorrow. I’ll be there. We’ll drink some more of those peach margaritas after. Like last time.”
    “That’ll work,” Kara replied. “Hey, bring Pete.”
    The woman scowled. “Girl, nothing personal, but th’only way that man’ll see you on Sunday is if you’re playing the halftime show for the Knicks or the Lakers an’ it’s on network TV.”
    Kara said, “From your mouth to God’s ear.”

Chapter Five
    One hundred years ago a moderately successful financier might’ve called this place home.
    Or the owner of a small haberdashery in the luxurious shopping neighborhood of Fourteenth Street.
    Or possibly a politician connected with Tammany Hall, savvy in the timeless art of growing rich through public office.
    The present owner of the Central Park West town house, however, didn’t know, or care, about its provenance. Nor would the Victorian furnishings or subdued fin de siècle objets d’art that had once graced these rooms appeal to Lincoln Rhyme at all. He enjoyed what surrounded him now: a disarray of sturdy tables, swivel stools, computers, scientific devices—a density gradient rack, a gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer, microscopes, plastic boxes in myriad colors, beakers, jars, thermometers, propane tanks, goggles, latched black or gray cases of odd shapes, which suggested they contained esoteric musical instruments.
    And wires.
    Wires and cables everywhere, covering much of the limited square footage of the room, some tidily coiled and connecting adjacent pieces of machinery,some disappearing through ragged holes shamefully cut into the hard-earned smoothness of century-old plaster-and-lath walls.
    Lincoln Rhyme himself was largely wireless now. Advances in infrared and radio technology had linked a microphone on his wheelchair—and on his bed upstairs—to environmental control units and computers. He drove his Storm Arrow with his left ring finger on an MKIV touchpad but all the other commands, from phone calls to email to slapping the image from his compound microscope onto computer monitors, could be accomplished by using his voice.
    It could also control his new Harman Kardon 8000 receiver, which was currently piping a pleasant jazz solo through the lab.
    “Control, stereo off,” Rhyme reluctantly ordered, hearing the front door slam.
    The music went silent, replaced by the erratic beat of footsteps in the front hall and the parlor. One of the visitors was Amelia Sachs, he knew; for a tall woman she had a decidedly light footfall. Then he heard the distinctive clump of Lon Sellitto’s big, perpetually outturned feet.
    “Sachs,” he muttered as she entered the room, “was it a big scene? Was it huge?”
    “Not so big.” She frowned at the question. “Why?”
    His eyes were on the gray milk crates containing evidence she and several other officers carried. “I was just wondering because it seemed to take a long time to search the scene and get back here. It is okay for you to use that flashing light on your car. That’s why they make them, you know. Sirens are allowed too.” WhenRhyme was bored he grew testy. Boredom was the biggest evil in his life.
    Sachs, however, was impervious to his sourness—she seemed in a particularly good mood—and said merely, “We’ve got ourselves some mysteries here, Rhyme.”
    He recalled that Sellitto had used the word “bizarre” about the killing.
    “Give me the scenario. What happened?”
    Sachs offered a likely account of the events, culminating in the perp’s escape from the recital hall.
    “The respondings heard a shot inside the hall then they did a kick-in. Timed it together, went in through the only two doors in the room. He was gone.”
    Sellitto consulted his notes. “The patrol officers put him in his fifties, medium height, medium build, no distinguishings other than a beard, brown hair. There was a janitor who says he didn’t see anybody go in or out of the room. But maybe he got witnessitis, you know. The school’s gonna call with his name and number. I’ll see if I can refresh his memory.”
    “What about the vic? What was