The Vanished Man

between parents and children.
    “And how does it work out, her being nearby?” Rhyme asked skeptically.
    “Sounds like the sitcom from hell, huh? But, nope, Mum’s great, my mom. She’s . . . hey, you know, a mother. They’re just a certain way. They never outgrow that.”
    “Where does she live?”
    “She’s in a care facility, Upper East Side.”
    “Is she very sick?”
    “Nothing serious. She’ll be fine.” Kara absently rolled the balls over her knuckles and into her palm.“As soon as she’s better we’re going to England, just the two of us. London, Stratford, the Cotswolds. My parents and I went there once. It was our best vacation ever. This time I’m going to drive on the left-hand side of the road and drink warm beer. They wouldn’t let me the last time. Of course, I was thirteen. You ever been there?”
    “Sure. I used to work with Scotland Yard from time to time. And I’d lecture there. I haven’t been back since . . . well, not for a few years.”
    “Magic and illusion were always more popular in England than here. There’s so much history. I want to show Mum where Egyptian Hall was in London. That was the center of the universe for magicians a hundred years ago. Sort of like a pilgrimage for me, you know.”
    He glanced toward the door. No sign of Thom. “Do me a favor.”
    “Sure.”
    “I need some medicine.”
    Kara noticed some pill bottles against the wall.
    “No, over on the bookcase.”
    “Ah, gotcha. Which one?” she asked.
    “The one on the end. Macallan, eighteen years.” He whispered, “And probably the quieter you poured it, the better.”
    “Hey, you’re talking to the right person. Robert-Houdin said there were three skills you needed to master to be a successful illusionist. Dexterity, dexterity and dexterity.” In a moment a healthy dose of the smoky whisky had been poured into his tumbler—indeed silently and almost invisibly. Thom could’ve been standing nearby and would never have noticed. Sheslipped the straw into the cup and fitted it into the holder on his chair.
    “Help yourself,” he said.
    Kara shook her head and gestured toward the coffeepot—which she alone had nearly drained. “That’s my poison.”
    Rhyme sipped the scotch. He tilted his head back and let the burn ease into the back of his mouth then disappear. Watching her hands, the improbable behavior of the red balls. Another long sip. “I like it.”
    “What?”
    “This idea of illusion.” Don’t get fucking maudlin, he told himself. You get maudlin when you’re drunk. But this self-insight didn’t stop him from taking another sip of whisky and continuing, “Sometimes reality can be a bit hard to take, you know.” Nor could he avoid an unfortunate look down at his motionless body.
    Instantly he regretted the comment—and the glance—and he started to change the subject. But Kara didn’t offer any canned sympathy. She said, “You know, I’m not sure there is much reality.”
    He frowned, not getting her meaning.
    “Isn’t most of our lives an illusion?” she continued.
    “How’s that?”
    “Well, everything in the past is memory, right?”
    “True.”
    “And everything in the future is imagination. Those’re both illusions—memories are unreliable and we just speculate about the future. The only thing that’s completely real is this one instant of the present—and that’s constantly changing from imagination to a memory. So, see? Most of our life’s illusory.”
    Rhyme laughed softly at this. A logician, a scientist, he wanted to poke a hole in her theory. But, he couldn’t. She was right, he concluded. He spent much of his time with memories of the Before, prior to the accident, and of how his life had changed After.
    And the future? Oh, yes, he often dwelt there. Unknown to almost everyone except Sachs and Thom he spent at least an hour most days exercising—working through manual range-of-motion exercises, doing aqua therapy at a nearby hospital or riding the Electrologic stimulation bicycle tucked away in a bedroom upstairs. This exercise regimen was partly to regain some nerve and motor functions, improve his stamina and prevent the adjunct health problems that can plague quads. But the main reason for his efforts was to keep his muscles in shape for the day when a cure was possible.
    He applied Kara’s theory to his profession too: working a case, he continually scanned his vast memory banks for knowledge about forensics and past crimes