The Vanished Man

terrible day. Two dead this morning. Kara too.
    And now a police officer was missing.
    Her hand rose to the speaker/mike of her SP-50 handy-talkie and pulled it off her shoulder. Time to tell Rhyme. Oh, brother. Don’t want to make this call. She called in to Central on the radio and asked for a patch. As she was waiting for the call to go through she felt a tug on her sleeve.
    Sachs turned. As she inhaled a shocked breath the mike slipped from her hand and swung at her side, a pendulum.
    Two people stood in front of her. One was the balding officer Sachs had been giving orders to at the fair ten minutes ago.
    The other was Kara, wearing an NYPD windbreaker. Frowning, the young woman looked up and down the alley. She asked, “So where is he?”

Chapter Nineteen
    “Are you all right?” Sachs stammered. “What . . . Wait, what happened?”
    “All right? Yeah, I’m fine. . . .” Kara took in the woman’s astonished gaze and said, “You mean you didn’t know?”
    The balding officer said to Sachs, “I tried to tell you. But you ran off before I had a chance.”
    “Tell me . . . ?” Sachs’s voice stopped working. She was so stunned—and riddled with relief—that she couldn’t speak.
    “You thought I was really hurt?” Kara said. “Oh, God.”
    Bell walked up, nodding a greeting to Kara, who said, “Amelia didn’t know.”
    “About?”
    “Our plan. The fake stabbing.”
    The expression on Bell’s face was pure shock. “Lord, you thought she was really dead?”
    The patrol officer repeated to Bell, “I tried to let her know. First, I couldn’t find her and then, when I did, she just tells me to seal the scene and call the M.E. and takes off.”
    Kara explained, “Roland and I were talking? And we figured that the Conjurer was going to hurt somebodyfor real—maybe set a fire or shoot or stab somebody. You know, to misdirect us so he could get away. So we thought we’d make up our own misdirection.”
    “To flush that boy outta the brush,” Bell added. “She got some catsup at the concession stand, squirted it on herself, screamed then fell down.”
    Kara opened the blue windbreaker to reveal the red stain on her purple tank top.
    The detective continued, “Was worried a few folks at the fair’d be all tore up over it—”
    Well, I’d guess . . .
    “—but we were thinking that’d be better than somebody really getting clocked or stabbed by the Conjurer.” Bell added proudly, “Was her idea. No foolin’.”
    “I’m getting a feel for how he thinks,” the young woman said.
    “Jesus.” Sachs found herself trembling. “It was so real.”
    Bell nodded. “She does dead good.”
    Sachs gave her a hug then said sternly, “But from now on, stay close. Or keep me in the loop. I’m too young for heart attacks.”
    They waited a short while but no reports came in of suspects spotted in the area. Finally Bell said, “You search the scene here, Amelia. I’m going to go interview the victim. See if she can tell us anything. Meet you back at the fair.”
    A crime scene bus was parked on Eighty-eighth Street. She walked to it and began to collect her equipment to run the scene. A voice clattered through her dangling speaker, startling her. She pulled her handsfreeheadset off her belt and plugged it in. Eight Eight Five. Repeat, K.”
    “Sachs, what the hell’s going on? I heard you had him and now he’s gone?”
    She told Rhyme what had happened, about flushing the Conjurer from the fair.
    “Kara’s idea? Playing dead? Hmm.” The final sound—a grunt really—was a high compliment, coming from Lincoln Rhyme.
    “But he’s disappeared,” Sachs added. “And we can’t find that officer either. Maybe he’s in pursuit. But we don’t know. Roland’s interviewing the woman we saved. See if she has any leads.”
    “Okay, well, run the scene, Sachs.”
    “Scenes plural,” she corrected sourly. “The coffee shop, the pond and the alley here. Too damn many.”
    “Not too many at all,” he replied. “Three times the chance to find some good evidence.”
    •   •   •
    Rhyme had been right.
    The three scenes had yielded a good amount of evidence.
    They’d been difficult to work, though for an unusual reason: the Conjurer had been present at each one—his phantom, at least. Hovering nearby. Making her pause often to tap the grip of her Glock, turning around and making sure the killer hadn’t materialized behind her.
    Search well but watch your back.
    She