The Vanished Man

never actually saw anyone. But then Svetlana Rasnikov hadn’t seen her killer shed the black camouflage and creep up behind her from the shadows.
    Tony Calvert hadn’t seen him hiding behind the mirror in the alley when he’d walked toward the fake cat.
    And even Cheryl Marston hadn’t truly seen the Conjurer though she’d sat and talked with him. She’d seen someone else entirely, never suspecting the terrible death he had planned for her.
    Sachs walked the grids at the various locations, took digital photos and released the scenes to Latents and Photo. She then returned to the fair, where she met Roland Bell. He’d interviewed Cheryl Marston at the hospital. They of course couldn’t rely on anything the killer had told her (“Pack of goddamn lies,” Marston had summarized bitterly) but she remembered some details from before the drug reached its full effect. She gave a good description of him, including particulars about the scars. She also recalled that he’d stopped at a car. She remembered the make and the first few letters of the tag. This was good news. There are a hundred ways to trace a car to a perpetrator or witness. Lincoln Rhyme called cars “evidence generators.”
    DMV had reported that a car matching the description—a 2001 tan Mazda 626—had been stolen from the White Plains airport a week ago. Sellitto put out an emergency vehicle locator request to all law enforcement agencies in the metro area and sent officers to check the blocks around the site of the attack to see if they could find the car, though neither officer had much faith that it would still be there.
    Bell was concluding his narrative about Cheryl Marston’s harrowing ordeal when a patrol officer taking a radio call interrupted him.
    “Detective Bell? What was that car again? The one the perp was driving?”
    “Tan Mazda. Six two six. Tag’s F-E-T two three seven.”
    “That’s it,” the officer said into his mike. Then to Bell and Sachs he added, “Just got a report—RMP spotted him on Central Park West. They went after him but—get this—he drove over the curb into the park itself. The RMP tried to follow but got stuck on the embankment.”
    “CPW and what?” Sachs asked.
    “Around Nine-two.”
    “He probably bailed,” Bell said.
    “He will bail,” Sachs said. “But he’s going to get some distance first.” She nodded to the evidence crates. “Get all this to Rhyme,” she called and ten seconds later she was in the seat of her Camaro and had the big engine rattling. She snapped the race-car harness on and pulled the canvas straps snug.
    “Amelia, wait!” Bell called. “ESU is on the way.”
    But the squeal of rubber and the cloud of blue smoke the Goodyears left behind were her only response to Bell’s words.
    •   •   •
    Skidding onto Central Park West, heading north, Sachs concentrated on avoiding pedestrians, poky cars, bicyclists and Rollerbladers.
    Baby strollers too. They were everywhere. Man, why weren’t these kids home taking naps?
    She pitched the blue flasher onto the dash and plugged it into the cigarette lighter outlet. The brilliant light began rotating and as she hurtled forwardshe found herself slapping the horn in time to the flash.
    A streak of gray in front of her.
    Shit. . . . As she braked hard to avoid the U-turner the Camaro ended up a scant foot from the side of a car that was worth twice her annual income. Then she crunched the accelerator again and the General Motors horses responded instantly. She managed to keep the needle under fifty until the traffic thinned out, around Ninetieth Street, and then she went to the floor.
    In a few seconds she hit seventy.
    A clatter through the headset of her Motorola, which lay on the front passenger seat. She grabbed it with one hand and pulled it on.
    “ ’Lo?” she called, dispensing with any pretense of requisite police radio codes.
    “Amelia? Roland here,” Bell called. He’d also given up on standard communication protocols.
    “Go ahead.”
    “We’ve got cars on the way.”
    “Where is he?” she asked, shouting over the roar of the engine.
    “Hold on. . . . Okay, he drove out of the park on Central Park North. Sideswiped a truck and kept going.”
    “Headed where?”
    “That was . . . It was less’n a minute ago. He’s going north.”
    “Got it.”
    Heading north in Harlem? Sachs considered. There were several routes out of the city from that areaof town but she doubted that he’d take