The Vanished Man

we’ve got to do. Sit tight. Stay clear of the door. And sit tight.”
    Which is when she heard the man shout from inside,“I’ve got a hostage. I’ve got a girl in here. Try to get in and I’ll kill her!”
    Oh, Jesus . . .
    “You, inside!” Franciscovich shouted. “Nobody’s going to do anything. Don’t worry. Just don’t hurt anybody else.” Was this procedure? she wondered. Neither prime-time television nor her Academy training was any help here. She heard Ausonio call Central and report that the situation was now a barricade and hostage-taking.
    Franciscovich called to the killer, “Just take it easy! You can—”
    A huge gunshot from inside. Franciscovich jumped like a fish. “What happened? Was that you?” she shouted into her radio.
    “No,” her partner replied, “I thought it was you.”
    “No. It was him. You okay?”
    “Yeah. He said he’s got a hostage. You think he shot her?”
    “I don’t know. How do I know?” Franciscovich, thinking: Where the hell is the backup?
    “Diane,” Ausonio whispered after a moment. “We’ve gotta go in. Maybe she’s hurt. Maybe she’s wounded.” Then, shouting: “You, inside!” No answer. “You!”
    Nothing.
    “Maybe he killed himself,” Franciscovich offered.
    Or maybe he fired the shot to make us think he’d killed himself and he’s waiting inside, drawing a target gut high on the doorway.
    Then that terrible image returned to her: the seedy door to the recital lobby opening, casting the pale lighton the victim, her face blue and cold as winter dusk. Stopping people from doing things like this was why she’d become a cop in the first place.
    “We have to go in, Diane,” Ausonio whispered.
    “That’s what I’m thinking. Okay. We’ll go in.” Speaking a bit manically as she thought of both her family and how to curl her left hand over her right when firing an automatic pistol in a combat shooting situation. “Tell the guard we’ll need lights inside the hall.”
    A moment later Ausonio said, “The switch is out here. He’ll turn ’em on when I say so.” A deep breath that Franciscovich heard through the microphone. Then Ausonio said, “Ready. On three. You count it.”
    “Okay. One . . . Wait. I’ll be coming in from your two o’clock. Don’t shoot me.”
    “Okay. Two o’clock. I’ll be—”
    “You’ll be on my left.”
    “Go ahead.”
    “One.” Franciscovich gripped the knob with her left hand. “Two.”
    This time her finger slipped inside the guard of her weapon, gently caressing the second trigger—the safety on Glock pistols.
    “Three!” Franciscovich shouted so loud that she was sure her partner heard the call without the radio. She shoved through the doorway into the large rectangular room just as the glaring lights came on.
    “Freeze!” she screamed—to an empty room.
    Crouching, skin humming with the tension, she swung her weapon from side to side as she scanned every inch of the space.
    No sign of the killer, no sign of a hostage.
    A glance to her left, the other doorway, where Nancy Ausonio stood, doing the same frantic scan of the room. “Where?” the woman whispered.
    Franciscovich shook her head. She noticed about fifty wooden folding chairs arranged in neat rows. Four or five of them were lying on their backs or sides. But they didn’t seem to be a barricade; they were randomly kicked over. To her right was a low stage. On it sat an amplifier and two speakers. A battered grand piano.
    The young officers could see virtually everything in the room.
    Except the perp.
    “What happened, Nancy? Tell me what happened.”
    Ausonio didn’t answer; like her partner she was looking around frantically, three-sixty, checking out every shadow, every piece of furniture, even though it was clear the man wasn’t here.
    Spooky . . .
    The room was essentially a sealed cube. No windows. The air-conditioning and heating vents were only six inches across. A wooden ceiling, not acoustic tile. No trapdoors that she could see. No doors other than the main one Ausonio had used and the fire door that Franciscovich had entered through.
    Where? Franciscovich mouthed.
    Her partner mouthed something back. The policewoman couldn’t decipher it but the message could be read in her face: I don’t have a clue.
    “Yo,” a loud voice called from the doorway. They spun toward it, drawing targets on the empty lobby.“Ambulance and some other officers just got here.” It was the security guard, hiding out