The Vanished Man

her noggin.
    Cheryl gave up. You win, you win. Take the goddamn boat, take your goddamn girlfriend. Just let me go, let me go in peace. She inhaled through her nose to let comforting death into her lungs.
    •   •   •
    “There!” Amelia Sachs cried.
    She and Bell ran forward over the pedestrian walkway toward the thick cluster of bushes and trees on the edge of the Hudson River. A man stood on a rotting pier, which had apparently been a dock years ago before access to the river had been filled in. This area was overgrown, filled with trash and stank of stagnant water.
    A man in chinos and a white shirt was holding a rope that arced over a small rusting crane. The other end disappeared below the surface.
    “Hey,” Bell called, “you!”
    He had brown hair, yes, but the outfit was different. No beard, either. And his eyebrows didn’t seem that thick. Sachs couldn’t see if the fingers of his left hand were fused together.
    Still, what did that mean?
    The Conjurer could be a man, could be a woman.
    The Conjurer could be invisible.
    As they jogged closer he looked up in apparent relief. “Here!” he cried. “Help me! Over here! There’s a woman in the water!”
    Bell and Sachs left Kara beside the overpass and sprinted through the brush surrounding the brackish pond. “Don’t trust him,” she called breathlessly to Bell as they ran.
    “I’m with you there, Amelia.”
    The man pulled harder and feet and then legs in tan slacks emerged, followed by a woman’s body. She was wrapped in chains. Oh, the poor thing! Sachs thought. Please let her be alive.
    They closed the distance fast, Bell calling on his handy-talkie for backup and medics. Several other people who were on the east side of the pedestrian bridge were gathering, alarmed at what was going on.
    “Help me! I can’t pull her up alone!” the rescuer called to Bell and Sachs. His voice was a gasp, out of breath from the effort. “This man, he tied her up and pushed her into the water. He tried to kill her!”
    Sachs drew her weapon and trained it on the man.
    “Hey, what’re you doing?” he asked in shock. “I’m trying to save her!” He glanced down at a cell phone on his belt. “ I’m the one called nine-one-one.”
    She still couldn’t see his left hand; it was enclosed by his right.
    “Keep your hands on that rope, sir,” she said. “Keep ’em where I can see them.”
    “I didn’t do anything!” He was wheezing—an odd sound. Maybe it wasn’t exertion but asthma.
    Staying clear of her line of fire, Bell grabbed the crane and swung it toward the muddy shore. When the woman was in arm’s reach he tugged her toward him, as the man holding the rope let out slack until she was lying on the ground. She lay on the grass, limp and cyanotic. The detective pulled the tape off her mouth, unhooked the chains and began to give her CPR.
    Sachs called to the dozen people gathered nearby, drawn by the commotion, “Is anybody a doctor?”
    No one answered. She glanced back at the victim and saw her stirring. . . . Then she began choking and spitting out water. Yes! They’d gotten to her in time. In a minute she’d be able to confirm the man’s identity. Then she looked past the scene and noticed a wad of shiny navy-blue cloth. She caught sight of a zipper and sleeve. It could be the jogging jacket he’d quick-changed out of.
    The man’s eyes followed hers and he saw it too.
    Was there a reaction, a faint wince? She thought so but couldn’t tell for sure.
    “Sir,” she called firmly, “until we get things sorted out here, I’m going to put some cuffs on you. I want your hands—”
    Suddenly a man’s panicked voice shouted, “Yo, lady, look out! That guy in the jogging suit—to yo right! He got a gun!”
    People screamed and dropped to the ground and Sachs crouched, spinning to her right, squinting for a target. “Roland, look out!”
    Bell too dropped to the ground, beside the woman, and looked in the same direction as Sachs, his Sig in his hand.
    But Sachs saw nobody in a jogging suit.
    Oh, no, she thought. No! Furious with herself, she understood what had happened—he’d mimicked the voice himself. Ventriloquism.
    She turned back fast to see a brilliant fireball explode from the rescuer’s hand. It hovered in the air, blinding her.
    “Amelia!” Bell called. “I can’t see anything! Where is he?”
    “I don’t—”
    A fast series of gunshots sounded from where the Conjurer had been standing. The