The Vanished Man

SUNDAY, APRIL 21, TO THURSDAY, APRIL 25

Chapter Forty-six

Amelia Sachs's Camaro hit ninety on the West Side Highway, speeding toward Central Park.

Unlike the FDR Drive, which was a controlled-access expressway, the roadway here was dotted with stoplights and, at Fourteenth Street, it featured a jog that sent her misaligned Chevrolet into an alarming skid, resulting in a sparking kiss between sheet steel and concrete barriers.

So the killer had tricked them with yet another genius's touch. Neither Charles Grady's death nor Andrew Constable's escape was Weir's goal; they were the ultimate misdirections. The killer had been after what they'd rejected yesterday as being too obvious – the Cirque Fantastique.

As she'd been about to kick in one of the few remaining hiding spots in the basement of the court and detention center, Glock high, Rhyme had called her and told her the situation. Lon Sellitto and Roland Bell were headed for the circus, Mel Cooper was jogging over there to help out. Bo Haumann and several ESU teams were on their way too. Everybody was needed and Rhyme wanted her uptown as fast as possible.

"I'm on my way," she'd said, clicking the phone off. She'd turned and begun to sprint out of the basement but paused, returned to the door she'd been standing at and kicked it in anyway.

Just in case.

It'd been completely empty, completely silent – except for the sound of the killer's derisive laughter in her imagination.

Five minutes later she was in her Camaro, pedal-down.

The light at Twenty-third Street was against her but the cross traffic wasn't too bad so she went through it fast, relying on the steering wheel, rather than her brakes or the conscience of citizens to yield to her flashing blue light, to get her to the other side.

Once through it, a fast downshift, pedal to the floor and the rattling engine sped her up to eighty. Her hand found her Motorola and she called Rhyme to tell him where she was and to ask what exactly he needed her to do.

• • •

Malerick wandered slowly out of the park, jostled by people running the opposite way, toward the fire.

"What's going on?"

"Jesus!"

"The police… Did somebody call the police?"

"Do you hear screaming? Do you hear that?"

At the corner of Central Park West and a cross street he collided with a young Asian woman, staring in concern toward the park. She asked, "You know what happened?"

Malerick thought, Yes, indeed I do: the man and the circus that destroyed my life are dying. But he frowned and said to her gravely, "I don't know. But it seems pretty serious."

He continued west, beginning what would be a very circuitous, half hour journey back to his apartment, during which he'd execute several quick changes and make absolutely certain no one was following him.

His plans called for him to stay at his apartment tonight then in the morning leave for Europe, where after several months of training he'd resume performing – under his new name. Not a soul on earth, other than his revered audience, knew "Malerick" and that's who he'd be to the public from now on. He had one regret – that he wouldn't be able to perform his favorite routine, the Burning Mirror; far too many people associated that with him. In fact, he'd have to trim a lot of the material. He'd give up ventriloquism, mentalism, and many of the close-in routines he'd done. Having such a broad repertoire could – as had happened this weekend – tip the gaff as to his identity.

Malerick continued to Broadway, then doubled back toward his apartment. He continued to check the streets behind and around him. He saw no one following.

He stepped inside the lobby and paused, studied the street for a full five minutes.

An elderly man – Malerick recognized him as a neighbor from across the street – walking his poodle. A kid on Rollerblades. Two teenage girls with ice-cream cones. No one else. The street was empty: tomorrow was Monday, a work- and school day. People were now home ironing clothes, helping their children with lessons… and glued to the TV watching CNN reporting on the terrible tragedy in Central Park.

He hurried to his apartment, doused all the lights.

And now the show closes, Revered Audience, as they always do. But it is the nature of our art that what's old to today's audience will be fresh and inventive to those elsewhere, tomorrow and the day after.

Did you know, my friends, that curtain calls are not to thank the performer but are intended to give him a chance to thank his audience – those people who were kind enough to lend him their attention during his show.

So I applaud you now for gracing me with your presence during these modest performances. I hope I've given you excitement and joy. I hope I've brought wonder to your hearts as you joined me in this netherworld where life is transformed to death, death to life and the real to the unreal. I bow to you, Revered Audience…

He lit a candle and settled into the couch. He kept his eyes fixed on the flame. Tonight, he knew that it would shudder, that he would receive a message.

Staring, sitting forward, bathed in the contentment of vengeance completed, rocking back and forth hypnotically, breathing slowly. The candle flickered.

Yes! Speak to me. Flicker again…

And indeed only a moment later it did.

But the shuddering wasn't a message from the supernatural spirit of a loved one long gone but solely from the gust of cool April evening air that filled the room when the half dozen police officers in riot gear broke the door in with a battering ram. They flung the gasping illusionist to the floor, where one of them – the red-haired policewoman he recalled from Lincoln Rhyme's apartment – seated a pistol against the back of his head and gave a steady recitation of his rights.

Chapter Forty-seven

Their arms trembling against the weight of both Lincoln Rhyme and his Storm Arrow wheelchair, two sweating ESU officers carried their burden up the stairs into the building and deposited the criminalist in the lobby. He then took over and maneuvered his chair into the Conjurer's apartment, where he parked next to Amelia Sachs.

While their fellow Emergency Service officers cleared the rooms, Rhyme watched as Bell and Sellitto carefully searched the astonished killer. Rhyme had suggested they borrow a doctor from the Medical Examiner's office to help in the search. He arrived a moment later and did as requested. It turned out to be a good idea; the M. D. found several slits cut into the man's skin – they looked like small scars but could be pulled open. Inside were tiny metal tools.

"X-ray him at the detention infirmary," Rhyme said. "Hell, wait, do an MRI. Every square inch."

When the Conjurer was triple cuffed and double shackled, two officers pulled the man into a sitting position on the floor. The criminalist was examining a bedroom in which was a huge collection of magician's props and tools. The masks, fake hands and latex appliances made the place eerie, sure, but Rhyme sensed mostly loneliness, seeing these objects stored here for the killer's horrific purposes when they were meant to be part of a show to entertain thousands of people.

"How?" the Conjurer whispered.

Rhyme noted the look of astonishment. Dismay too. The criminalist relished the sensation. All hunters will tell you that the actual search for their quarry is the best part of the game. But no hunter can be truly great unless he feels peak pleasure when he finally brings down his prey.

"How did you figure it out?" the man repeated in his asthmatic wheeze.

"That your point was to hit the circus?" Rhyme glanced at Sachs.

She said, "There wasn't a lot of evidence but it suggested -"

"'Suggested,' Sachs? I'd say it screamed."

"Suggested," she continued, unfazed by his interjection, "what you were really going to do. In the closet – the one in the basement of the Criminal Courts building – we found the bag with your change of clothes in it, the fake wound."

"You found the bag?"

She continued, "There was some dried red paint on the shoes and your suit. And carpet fibers."

"I thought the paint was fake blood." Rhyme shook his head, angry with himself. "It was logical to make that assumption but I should've considered other sources. It turned out that the FBI's paint database identified it as Jenkin Manufacturing automotive paint. The shade is an orange-red that's used exclusively for emergency vehicles. That particular formula is sold in small cans – for touch-ups. The fibers were automotive too – they were from heavy-duty commercial carpet installed in CMC ambulances up until eight years ago."

Sachs: "So Lincoln deduced that you'd bought or stolen an old ambulance recently and fixed it up. It might've been for an escape or for another attempt on Charles Grady's life. But then he remembered the bits of brass – what if they actually were from a timer, like we'd thought originally? And since you'd used gas on the handkerchief in Lincoln 's apartment, well, that meant that, possibly, you were going to hide a gas bomb in a fake ambulance."

Rhyme offered, "Then I simply used logic -"

"He played a hunch is what he's sayin'," Bell chided.

"Hunches," Rhyme snapped, "are nonsense. Logic isn't. Logic is the backbone of science, and criminalistics is pure science."

Sellitto rolled his eyes at Bell.

But insubordination in the ranks wasn't going to dampen Rhyme's enthusiasm. "Logic, I was saying. Kara had told us about pointing your audience's attention toward where you don't want them to look."

The best illusionists'll rig the trick so well that they'll point directly at their method, directly at what they're really going to do. But you won't believe them. You'll look in the opposite direction. When that happens, you've had it. You've lost and they've won.

"That's what you did. And I have to say it was a brilliant idea. Not a compliment I give very often, is it, Sachs?… You wanted revenge against Kadesky for the fire that ruined your life. And so you created a routine that'd let you do it and get away afterward – just like you'd create an illusion for the stage, with layers of misdirections." Rhyme squinted in consideration. He said, "The first misdirection: You 'forced' – Kara told us that's the word illusionists use, right?"

The killer said nothing.

"I'm sure that's what she said. First, you forced the thought on us that you were going to destroy the circus for revenge. But I didn't believe it – too obvious. And our suspicion led to misdirection two: you planted the newspaper article about Grady, the restaurant receipt, the press pass and the hotel key to make us conclude you were going to kill him… Oh, the jogging jacket by the Hudson River? You were going to leave that at the scene intentionally, weren't you? That was planted evidence you wanted us to find."

The Conjurer nodded. "I was, yes. But it worked out better because your officers surprised me and it looked more natural for me to leave the jacket when I escaped."

"Now, at that point," the criminalist continued, "we think you're a hired assassin, using illusion to get close to Charles Grady and kill him… We've figured you out. There go our suspicions… To an extent."

The Conjurer managed a faint smile. "'An extent,'" he wheezed. "See when you use misdirection to trick people – smart people – they continue to be suspicious."

"So you hit us with misdirection number three. To keep us focused away from the circus you made us think that you got arrested intentionally to get inside the detention center not to kill Grady but to break Constable out of jail. By then we'd forgotten completely about the circus and Kadesky. But in fact you didn't care a bit about either Constable or Grady."

"They were props, misdirections to fool you," he admitted.

"The Patriot Assembly, they're not going to be too happy about that," Sellitto muttered.

A nod at the shackles. "I'd say that's the least of my worries, wouldn't you?"

Knowing what he did about Constable and the others in the Assembly, Rhyme wasn't too sure.

Bell nodded at the Conjurer and asked Rhyme, "But why'd he go to the trouble to set up Constable and plan the fake escape?"

Sellitto answered, "Obviously – to, you know, misdirect us away from the circus so he'd have an easier time getting the bomb there."

"Actually, no, Lon," Rhyme said slowly. "There was another reason."

At these words, or perhaps at the cryptic tone in Rhyme's voice, the killer turned toward the criminalist, who could see caution in his eyes – real caution, if not fear – for the first time that night.

Gotcha, Rhyme thought.

He said, "See, there was a fourth misdirection."

"Four?" Sellitto said.

"That's right… He's not Erick Weir," Rhyme announced with what even he had to admit was excessive dramatics.

Chapter Forty-eight

With a sigh, the killer eased back against a chair leg, eyes closing.

"Not Weir?" Sellitto asked.

"That," Rhyme continued, "was the whole point of what he did this weekend. He wanted revenge against Kadesky and the Hasbro circus – the Cirque Fantastique now. Well, it's easy to get revenge if you don't care about escaping. But" – a nod toward the Conjurer – "he wanted to get away, stay out of prison, keep performing. So he did an identity quick change. He became Erick Weir, got himself arrested this afternoon, fingerprinted and then escaped."

Sellitto nodded. "So after he killed Kadesky and burned down the circus everybody'd be looking for Weir and not for who he really is." A frown.

"And who the hell is he?"

"Arthur Loesser, Weir's protégé."

The killer gasped softly as the last shred of anonymity – and hope for escape – vanished.

"But Loesser called us," Sellitto pointed out. "He was out west. In Nevada."

"No, he wasn't. I checked the phone records. The call came up 'No caller ID' on my phone because he placed it through a prepaid long-distance account. He was calling from a pay phone on West Eighty-seventh Street. He doesn't have a wife. The message on his voice mail in Vegas was fake."

"Just like he called the other assistant, Keating, and pretended to be Weir, right?" Sellitto asked.

"Yep. Asking about the Ohio fire, sounding weird and threatening. To back up what we thought: that Weir was in New York to get revenge against Kadesky. He had to leave a trail that Weir'd resurfaced. Like ordering the Darby handcuffs in Weir's name. The gun he bought too."

Rhyme looked over the killer. "How's the voice?" he asked sardonically. "The lungs feel better now?"

"You know they're fine," Loesser snapped. The whisper and wheezing were gone.

There was no damage to his lungs. It was just another ruse to make them believe he was Weir.

Rhyme nodded toward the bedroom. "I saw some designs for promotional posters in there. I assume you drew them. The name on them was 'Malerick.' That's you now, right?"

The killer nodded. "What I told you before is true – I hated my old name, I hate anything about me from before the fire. It was too hard to be reminded of those times. Malerick's how I think of myself now… How did you catch on?"

"After they sealed the corridor in detention you used your shirt and wiped the floor and the cuffs," Rhyme explained. "But when I thought about that I couldn't figure out why. To clean up the blood? That didn't make sense. No, the only answer I could come up with was that you wanted to get rid of your fingerprints. But you'd just been printed; why would you be worried about leaving them in the corridor?" Rhyme gave a shrug, suggesting that the answer was painfully obvious.

"Because your real prints were different from the ones on the card that'd just been rolled and filed."

"How the fuck d'he manage that?" Sellitto asked.

"Amelia found traces of fresh ink at the scene. That was from his being printed tonight. The trace wasn't important in itself but what was significant was that it matched the ink we found in his gym bag at the Marston assault. That meant he'd come in contact with fingerprint ink before today. I guessed that he stole a blank fingerprint card and printed it at home with the real Erick Weir's prints. He used that adhesive wax to hide it in his jacket lining tonight – we were looking for weapons and keys, not pieces of cardboard – and then after they rolled his prints he distracted the technicians and swapped the cards. Probably flushed the new one or threw it out."

Loesser grimaced in anger, a confirmation of Rhyme's deduction.

"DOC sent over the card they had on file and Mel processed it. The rolled prints were Weir's but the latents were Loesser's. He was in the APIS database from when he was arrested with Weir on those reckless endangerment charges in New Jersey. We checked the DOC officer's Glock too. She took that with her and he didn't get a chance to wipe it down. Those prints came back a match for Loesser too. Oh, and we got a partial from the razor knife blade." Rhyme glanced at the small bandage on Loesser's temple. "You forgot to take that with you."

"I couldn't find it," the killer snapped. "I didn't have time to look."

"But," Sellitto pointed out to Rhyme, "he'd be younger than Weir."

"He is younger than Weir." He nodded toward Loesser's face. "The wrinkles're just latex appliances. Like the scars – they're all fake. Weir was born in 1950. Loesser's twenty years younger so he had to age." Then he muttered, "Oh, I missed that one. Should've thought better. Those bits of latex covered with makeup that Amelia found at the scenes? I assumed they were from those finger pads he was wearing. But that wouldn't make sense. Nobody'd wear makeup on his fingers. It would come off. No, it was from the other appliances." Rhyme examined the killer's cheeks and brow. "The latex must be uncomfortable."

"You get used to it."

"Sachs, let's see what he really looks like."

With some difficulty she peeled off the beard and patches of wrinkles around his eyes and chin. The resulting face was blotchy from the adhesive but, yes, he was clearly much younger. The structure of his face was different too. He didn't look much at all like the man he'd been.

"Not like those masks in Mission Impossible hm? Put 'em on, pull 'em off."

"No, real appliances aren't like that at all."

"The fingers too." Rhyme nodded at the killer's left hand. To make the fusing of the fingers credible they'd been bound together with a bandage then covered in thick latex. As a result the two digits were wrinkled, limp and virtually white but, of course, they were otherwise normal. Sachs examined them. "I was just asking Rhyme why you didn't uncover them at the street fair – since we were looking for a man with a deformed left hand." But the two digits had their own appearance of deformity and would've given him away.

Rhyme looked the killer over and said, "Pretty close to a perfect crime: a perp who made certain that we charged somebody else. We'd know Weir was guilty, we'd have positive ID. But then he'd disappear. Loesser would go on with his life and the escapee – Weir – would be gone forever. The Vanished Man. "

And even though Loesser had picked the victims yesterday to misdirect the police, not out of any deep psychological urge, nonetheless Terry Dobyns's ultimate diagnosis fit perfectly – seeking revenge for the fire that had destroyed a loved one. The difference was that the tragedy hadn't been Weir's loss of his career and the death of his wife; it had been Loesser's loss of his mentor, Weir himself.

"But there's one problem," Sellitto pointed out. "All he did by swapping the print cards was make sure we'd go after the real Weir. Why would he do that to his mentor?"

Rhyme said, "Why do you think I made those strapping young officers carry me up the stairs into this extremely inaccessible place, Lon?" He looked around the room. "I wanted to walk the grid myself – oh, excuse me, I should say roll the grid." He now wheeled through the room expertly, using the touchpad controller.

He stopped by the fireplace and glanced up. "I think I've found our perp, Lon."

He looked up at the mantel, on which sat an inlaid box and a candle. "That's Erick Weir, right? His ashes."

Loesser said softly, "That's right. He knew he didn't have much time left. He wanted to get out of the burn unit in Ohio and go back to his house in Vegas before he died. I snuck him out one night and drove him home. He lived another few weeks after we got there. I bribed a night-shift operator at a mortuary to cremate him."

"And the fingerprints?" Rhyme asked. "You rolled his prints after he died? Had stamps made so you could do the fake fingerprint card?" A nod.

"So you've been planning this for years?"

Passionately Loesser said, "Yes! His death – it's like a burn that doesn't stop hurting."

Bell asked, "You risked all of this for revenge? For your boss?"

"Boss? He was more than my boss," Loesser spat out madly. "You don't understand. I think about my father a couple times a year – and he's still alive. I think about Mr. Weir every hour of the day. Ever since he came into the shop in Vegas where I was performing… Young Houdini, that was me… I was fourteen then. What a day that was! He told me he was going to give me the vision to be great. On my fifteenth birthday I ran away from home to travel with him." His voice wavered for a moment and fell silent. He continued. "Mr. Weir may've beat me and screamed at me and made my life hell sometimes but he saw what was inside me. He cared for me. He taught me how to be an illusionist…" A cloud filled the man's face. "And then he was taken away from me. Because of Kadesky. He and that fucking business of his killed Mr. Weir… And me too. Arthur Loesser died in that fire." He looked at the box and on his face there was an expression of sorrow and hope and such odd love that Rhyme felt a chill crawl down his neck until it disappeared into his numb body.

Loesser looked back to Rhyme and gave a cold laugh. "Well, you may've caught me. But Mr. Weir and I won. You didn't stop us in time. The circus is gone, Kadesky's gone. And if he isn't dead himself, his career's over."

"Ah, yes, the Cirque Fantastique, the fire." Rhyme shook his head gravely. Then he added, "Still…"

Loesser frowned, sweeping the room with his eyes, trying to nab Rhyme's meaning. "What? What're you saying?"

"Think back a little. Earlier tonight. You're in Central Park, watching the flames, the smoke, the destruction, listening to the screams… You figure you better leave – we'll be looking for you soon. You're on your way back here. Someone – a young woman, an Asian woman in a jogging suit – bumps into you. You exchange a few words about what's going on. You go your separate ways."

"What the hell're you talking about?" Loesser snapped.

"Check the back of your watchband," Rhyme said.

With a clink of the cuffs he turned his wrist over. On the band was a small black disk. Sachs peeled it off. "GPS tracker. We used that to follow you here. Weren't you a little surprised that we just showed up aknockin' on your door?"

"But who -? Wait! It was that illusionist, that girl! Kara! I didn't recognize her."

Rhyme said wryly, "Well, that is the whole point of illusion now, isn't it? We spotted you in the park but we were afraid you'd get away. You do have a tendency to do that, you know. And we assumed you'd take a complicated route back to where you were staying. So I asked Kara to do a little disguise of her own. She's good, that woman. Hardly recognized her myself. When she bumped into you she taped the sensor to your watch."

Sachs continued, "We might've been able to take you down on the street but you've been just a little too good at escaping. Anyway, we wanted to find your hidey-hole."

"But that means you knew before the fire!"

"Oh," Rhyme said dismissively, "your ambulance? The Bomb Squad found it and rendered safe in about sixty seconds. They drove it off and replaced it with another one so you wouldn't think we'd caught on. We knew you'd want to watch the fire. We got as many undercover officers as we could into the park, looking for a male about your build who'd watch the fire but then who'd leave not long after it started. A couple of them saw you and we had Kara nail you with the chip. And presto -" Rhyme smiled at his choice of word. "Here we are."

"But the fire… I saw it!"

Rhyme said to Sachs, "See what I keep saying about evidence versus witnesses? He saw the fire; therefore it had to be real." To Loesser he said, "But it wasn't real now, was it?"

Sachs said, ''What you saw was smoke from a couple of National Guard smoke grenades we mounted on the top of the tent with a crane. The flames? From a propane burner at the stage door where the ambulance was. Then they backlit a couple more burners in the ring and projected the shadows of the flames onto the side of the tent."

"I heard screams," Loesser whispered.

"Oh, that was Kara's idea. She thought we could have Kadesky tell the audience they were taking an intermission from the show so a movie studio could shoot a scene in the tent – about a fire in a circus. He had everybody start screaming on cue. They loved it. They got to be extras."

"No," the Conjurer whispered. "It was -"

"- an illusion," Rhyme said to him. "It was all an illusion." Some sleight of mind from the Immobilized Man.

"I better run the scene here," Sachs said, nodding around the room, and frowning.

"Sure, sure, Sachs. What was I thinking of? Here we are sitting around chatting and contaminating a crime scene."

With multiple cuffs and shackles binding him and an officer on either side, the killer was led out the door, far less cocky than the last time he'd been led down to detention.

As two ESU officers were about to schlepp Rhyme outside once more, Lon Sellitto's phone rang. He took the call. "She's right here…" A glance at Sachs. "You want to talk to her…?" Then he shook his head at her and continued to listen, looking grave. "Okay, I'll tell her." He hung up.

"That was Marlow," he said to Sachs.

The head of Patrol Services. What was up? the criminalist wondered, seeing the troubled look on Sellitto's face.

The rumpled detective continued, speaking to Sachs, "He wants you downtown tomorrow at ten A. M. It's about your promotion." Sellitto then frowned. "There was something else he wanted me to tell you, something about your score on the test. What was it?" He shook his head, stared at the ceiling. Clearly troubled. "What was it?"

Sachs looked on impassively, though Rhyme observed a fingernail make a brief assault on the cuticle of her thumb.

Then the detective snapped his fingers. "Oh, yeah, now I remember. He said you got the third highest score in the history of the department." A frown filled his face and he looked at Rhyme. "You know what this means, don'tcha? Christ have mercy – now there'll be no living with her."

• • •

Jogging, breathless.

The corridor was a mile long.

Kara sprinted along the gray linoleum with only one thing in her mind: not the late Erick Weir or his psychotic assistant, Art Loesser, not the brilliance of the fire illusion at the Cirque Fantastique. No, all she thought was: Am I in time?

Down the dim corridor. Footsteps pounding on the floor.

Past doorways closed and doorways open. Hearing bits of TV and music, hearing farewell conversation as families prepared to leave at the end of Sunday visiting hours.

Hearing her own hollow footsteps.

She paused outside the room. Inhaled a dozen deep breaths to steady her voice and, more nervous than she'd ever been going onstage, stepped into the room.

A pause. Then: "Hi, Mum."

Her mother turned away from the TV. She blinked in surprise and smiled. "Why, look who it is. Hello, dear."

Oh, my God, Kara thought, looking at the bright eyes. She's back! She's really back.

She walked over and hugged the woman then pulled the chair closer. "How are you?"

"Fine. Little chilly tonight."

"I'll close the window." Kara rose and pulled it shut. "I thought you weren't going to make it, honey."

"Busy night. I'll have to tell you what I've been up to, Mum. You won't believe it."

"I can't wait."

Excitedly Kara asked, "You want some tea or something?" She felt a fierce urgency to pour out all the details of her life in the past six months, to ramble. But she told herself to slow down; gushing, she sensed, could easily overwhelm her mother, who seemed immensely fragile at the moment.

"Nope, not a thing, dear… Could you shut the TV off? I'd rather visit with you. There's that control. I can never get it to work. Sometimes, I almost think, somebody sneaks in and changes the buttons."

"I'm glad I got here before you went to bed."

"I would've stayed up to visit with you."

Kara gave her a smile. Her mother then said, "I was just thinking about your uncle, honey. My brother."

Kara nodded. Her mother's late brother was the black sheep of the family. He'd gone out west when Kara was young and never kept in touch with the family.

Kara's mother and grandparents had refused to talk about him and his name was verboten at family gatherings. But, of course, the rumors flew: he was gay, he was straight and married but he'd had an affair with a Roma gypsy, he'd shot a man over another woman, he'd never married and was an alcoholic jazz musician…

Kara'd always wanted to learn the truth about him. "What about him, Mum?"

"You want to hear?"

"Oh, you bet – tell me some stories," she now asked, leaning forward and resting her hand on the woman's arm.

"Well, let's see, when would it've been? I'd guess May of seventy, maybe seventy-one. Not sure of the year – that's my mind for you – but I know it was May. Your uncle and some of his army buddies had come back from Vietnam."

"He was a soldier? I never knew that."

"Oh, he looked very handsome in his uniform. Well, they had a terrible time over there." Her voice grew serious. "Your uncle's best friend was killed right next to him. Died in his arms. A big black fellow. Well, Tom and another soldier got it into their heads that they'd like to start a business to help their dead friend's family. So what they did was they went down south and bought a boat. Can you imagine your uncle on a boat? I thought it was the strangest thing ever. They started a shrimp business. Tom made a fortune."

"Mum," Kara said softly.

Her mother smiled at some memory and shook her head. "A boat… Well, the company was very successful. And people were surprised because, well, Tom never seemed too bright." Her mother's eyes sparkled. "But you know what he used to say to them?"

"What, Mum?"

"'Stupid is as stupid does.'"

"That's a good expression," Kara whispered.

"Oh, you would've loved that man, Jenny. Did you know he met the president of the United States once. And played Ping-Pong in China."

Not noticing her daughter's quiet crying, the old woman continued to tell Kara the rest of the story of Forrest Gump, the movie that she'd been watching on TV a few moments before. Kara's uncle's name was Gil but in her mother's fantasy he was Tom – presumably after the film's star, Tom Hanks. Kara herself had become Jenny, Forrest's girlfriend.

No, no, no, Kara thought in despair, I didn't make it in time after all.

Her mother's soul had come and gone, leaving in its place only illusion.

The woman's narrative became a garbled stream that moved from the shrimp boat in the Gulf to a swordfish boat in the North Atlantic caught in something called a "perfect storm" to an ocean liner sinking while her brother, in tuxedo, played the violin on deck. Thoughts, memories and images from a dozen other movies or books joined real memories. Soon Kara's "uncle," as well as all semblance of coherence, vanished completely.

"It's somewhere outside," the old woman said with finality. "I know it's outside." She closed her eyes.

Kara sat forward in her chair, gently resting her hand on her mother's smooth arm until the old woman was asleep. Thinking: But she had been in her right mind earlier. Jaynene wouldn't've paged her if she hadn't.

And if it happened once, she thought defiantly, it could happen again.

Finally Kara rose and walked out into the dark corridor, reflecting that, as talented a performer as she might be, she lacked the one skill she so desperately wanted: to magically transport her mother to that place where hearts stoked with the fuel of affection burn warmly for all the years God assigned them. Where minds retain perfectly every chapter in the rich histories of families. Where the apparent gulfs between loved ones turn out to be, in the end, nothing more than effects – temporary illusions.

Chapter Forty-nine

Gerald Marlow, a man with thick, Vitalis-crisp hair, was head of the NYPD's Patrol Services Division. His deliberate manner had been forged walking a beat for twenty years and tempered by spending another fifteen at the far-riskier job of supervising officers who walked similar beats.

Now, Monday morning, Amelia Sachs stood more or less at attention in front of him, willing her knees to ignore the arthritis that dug switchblades into them.

They were in Marlow's corner office high up in the Big Building, One Police Plaza, downtown.

Marlow glanced up from the file he'd been reading and eyed her impeccably pressed blue navies. "Oh, sit down, Officer. Sorry. Sit down… So, Herman Sachs's daughter."

Sitting, she noted a faint hesitation between the last two words of his sentence. Had the word "girl" been quickly replaced?

"That's right."

"I was at the funeral."

"I remember."

"It was a good one."

As funerals go.

Eyes on hers, posture upright, Marlow said, "Okay, Officer. Here it is. You're in some trouble."

It hit her like a physical blow. "I'm sorry, sir?"

"A crime scene on Saturday, by the Harlem River. Car went into the water. You ran it?"

Where the Conjurer's Mazda took out crack-head Carlos's shack and went for a swim.

"Yes, that's right."

"You placed somebody under arrest at the scene," Marlow said.

"Oh, that. Not really arrest. This guy went under the tape and was digging around in a sealed area. I had him escorted out and detained."

"Detained, arrested. The point is he was in custody for a while."

"Sure. I needed him out of my hair. It was an active scene."

Sachs was starting to get her bearings. The obnoxious citizen had complained. Happened every day. Nobody paid attention to crap like that. She began to relax.

"Well, the guy? He was Victor Ramos."

"Yeah, I think he told me that."

"Congressman Victor Ramos."

The relaxation vanished.

The captain opened a New York Daily News. "Let's see, let's see. All, here." He lifted the paper and held up a centerfold, which featured a large picture of the man in cuffs at the scene. The headline read: "TIME-OUT" FOR VICTOR.

"You told the officers on the scene to put him in time-out?"

"He was -"

"Did you?"

"I believe I did, sir, yes."

Marlow offered, "He claimed he was looking for survivors."

"Survivors?" she barked, laughing. "It was a ten-by-ten squatter's shack that got clipped when the perp's car went into the river. Part of a wall fell over and -"

"You're getting a little hot here, Officer."

" – and I think a bag of goddamn empties got ripped open. That was the only damage. EMS cleared the shack and I sealed it. The only living things left to rescue in that place were the lice."

"Uh-huh," Marlow said evenly, uneasy with her temper. "He said he was simply making sure anybody living there was safe."

She added with uncontrolled irony, "The home owners walked out on their own. Nobody was hurt. Though I understand one of them later got a bruised cheek when he resisted arrest."

"Arrest?"

"He tried to steal a fireman's flashlight and then urinated on him."

"Oh. Brother…"

She muttered, "They were unharmed, they were stoned and they were assholes. And those were the citizens Ramos was worried about?"

The captain's grimace, containing shreds of both caution and sympathy, faded. The emotion was replaced by his rubbery bureaucratic façade. "Do you know for a fact that there was any evidence Ramos destroyed that would've been relevant to collaring the suspect?"

"Whether there was or not doesn't make a bit of difference, sir. It's the procedure that's important." She was struggling to keep calm, keep the edge out of her voice. Marlow was, after all, her boss's boss's boss.

"Trying to work things out here, Officer Sachs," he said sternly. Then repeated, "Do you know for a fact that evidence was destroyed?"

She sighed. "No."

"So his being in the scene was irrelevant."

"I -"

"Irrelevant?"

"Yessir." She cleared her throat. "We were after a cop killer, Captain. Does that count for anything?" she asked bitterly.

"To me. To a lot of people, yeah. To Ramos, no."

She nodded. "Okay, what kind of firestorm're we talking?"

"There were TV crews there, Officer. You watch the news that night?"

Nup, she thought, I was pretty busy trying to collar a murderer. Sachs chose a different answer: "No sir."

"Well, Ramos was prominently featured, being led off in cuffs."

She said, "You know the only reason he was in the scene in the first place was to be filmed risking his goddamn life to look for survivors… I'm curious, sir: Ramos running for reelection any time soon?"

Even confirming comments like that can get you early retirement. Or no retirement at all. Marlow said nothing.

"What's the…?"

"Bottom line?" Marlow's lips tightened. "I'm sorry, Officer. You've washed out. Ramos checked on you. Found out about the sergeant's exam. He pulled strings. He got you flunked."

"He did what?"

"Flunked. He talked to the examining officers."

"I had the third highest exam in the history of the department," she said, laughing bitterly. "Isn't that right?"

"Yes – on the multiple choice and the orals. But you need to pass the assessment exercise too."

"I did fine on it."

"The preliminary results were good. But in the final report you flunked."

"Impossible. What happened?"

"One of the officers in the exercise wouldn't pass you."

"Wouldn't pass me? But I…" Her voice faded as she pictured the handsome officer with the shotgun stepping out from behind the Dumpster. The man she'd snubbed.

Bang, bang…

The captain read from a piece of paper, "He said you didn't quote 'display proper respect for individuals in a supervisory position. And she exhibited disrespectful behavior with regard to peers, leading to situations of endangerment.'"

"So Ramos tracked down somebody willing to dime me out and fed him those lines. I'm sorry, Captain, but you really think a street cop talks that way? 'Situations of endangerment'? Come on."

Well, Pop, she thought to her father, how's this for sticking in the craw?

Feeling heartsick.

Then she looked carefully at Marlow. "What else, sir? There is something else, isn't there?"

To his credit he held her eye as he said, "Yes, Officer. There is. It gets worse, I'm afraid."

Let's hear how exactly it could be worse, Pop. "Ramos is trying to get you suspended."

"Suspended. That's bullshit."

"He wants an inquest."

"Vindictive…" The "prick" didn't get spoken as she saw in Marlow's gaze the reminder that it was this sort of attitude that had gotten her into trouble in the first place.

He added, "I have to tell you that he's mad enough to… Well, he's going for suspension without pay." This punishment was usually reserved for officers accused of crimes.

"Why?"

Marlow didn't answer. But he didn't need to, of course. Sachs knew: to bolster his credibility Ramos had to show that the time-out woman who'd embarrassed him was a loose cannon.

And the other reason was that he was a vindictive prick.

"What'd the grounds be?"

"Insubordination, incompetence."

"I can't lose my shield, sir." Trying not to sound desperate.

"There's nothing I can do about your flunking the exam, Amelia. That's in the board's hands and they've already made their decision. But I'll fight the suspension. I can't promise anything, though. Ramos's got wire. All over the city."

A hand rose into her scalp. She scratched until she felt pain. Lowered her hand, feeling slick blood. "Can I speak freely, sir?"

Marlow slumped slightly in his chair. "Jesus, Officer, sure. You have to know I feel bad about this. Say what you want. And you don't have to sit at attention. We're not the army, you know."

Sachs cleared her throat. "If he tries for suspension, sir, my next call'll be to the PBA lawyers. I'll light this one up. I'll take it as far as I have to."

And she would. Though she knew how non-rank cops who fought discrimination or suspensions through the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association were unofficially red-flagged. Many of them found their careers permanently sidetracked even if they won technical victories.

Marlow held her steady gaze as he said, "Noted, Officer."

So it was knuckle time.

Her father's expression. About being a cop.

Amie, you have to understand: sometimes it's a rush, sometimes you get to make a difference, sometimes it's boring. And sometimes, not too often, thank God, it's knuckle time. Fist to fist. You're all by your lonesome, with nobody to help you. And I don't mean just the perps. Sometimes it'll be you against your boss. Sometimes against their bosses. Could be you against your buddies too. You gonna be a cop, you got to be ready to go it alone. There's no getting around it.

"Well, for the time being you're still on active duty."

"Yessir. When will I know?"

"A day or two."

Walking toward the door.

She stopped, turned back. "Sir?"

Marlow glanced up as if he was surprised she was still there.

"Ramos was in the middle of my crime scene. If it'd been you there, or the mayor, or the president himself, I would've done exactly the same thing."

"That's why you're your father's daughter, Officer, and why he'd be proud of you." Marlow lifted his phone off the cradle. "We'll hope for the best."

Chapter Fifty

Thom let Lon Sellitto into the front hallway, where Lincoln Rhyme sat in his candy-apple red chair, grumbling at construction workers to mind the woodwork as they carted refuse downstairs from the repair work currently going on in his fire-damaged bedroom.

Passing by on his way to the kitchen to fix lunch, Thom grumbled back, "Leave 'em alone, Lincoln. You couldn't care less about the woodwork."

"It's the principle," the criminalist replied tautly. "It's my woodwork and their clumsiness."

"He's always this way when a case's over," the aide said to Sellitto. "Have you got some really thorny robbery or murder for him? A good pacifier?"

"I don't need a pacifier," Rhyme snapped as the aide vanished. "I need people to be careful with the walls!"

Sellitto said, "Hey, Linc. We've got to talk."

The criminalist noted the tone – and the look in Sellitto's eyes. They'd been working together for years and he could read every emotion the cop broadcast, especially when he was troubled. What now? he wondered.

"Just heard from the head of Patrol. It's about Amelia." Sellitto cleared his throat.

Rhyme's heart undoubtedly gave an extra slam in his chest. He never felt it, of course, though he did sense a surge of blood in his neck and head and face.

Thinking: Bullet, car crash.

He said evenly in a low voice, "Go on."

"She washed out. The sergeant's exam."

"What?"

"Yup."

Rhyme's hot relief turned instantly to sorrow for her. The detective continued, "It's not official yet. But I know."

"Where'd you hear?"

"Cop radar. A fucking bird. I don't know. Sachs's a star. When something like this happens, word gets out."

"What about her score on the exam?"

"Despite her score on the exam."

Rhyme wheeled into the lab. The detective, looking particularly rumpled today, followed.

The explanation was pure Sachs, it turned out. She'd ordered somebody out of an active crime scene and, when he wouldn't leave, had him cuffed. "Bad for her, the guy turned out to be Victor Ramos."

"The congressman." Lincoln Rhyme had virtually no interest in local government but he knew about Ramos: an opportunistic politico who'd abandoned his Latino constituents in Spanish Harlem until recently, now that the politically correct climate – and size of the electorate – meant he could push for Albany or a spot in Washington. "Can they wash her out?"

"Come on, Linc, they can do what they fucking want. They're even talking suspension."

"She can fight it. She will fight it."

"And you know what happens to street cops who take on brass. Odds're, even if she wins, they'll send her to East New York. Hell, even worse, they'll send her to a desk in East New York."

"Fuck," the criminalist spat out.

Sellitto paced around the room, stepping over cables and glancing at the Conjurer case whiteboards. The detective dropped into a chair that creaked under his weight. He kneaded a roll of fat around his waistband; the Conjurer case had seriously sidetracked his diet. "One thing," he said softly, a whiff of conspiracy in his voice.

"Yeah?"

"There's this guy I know. He was the one cleaned up the Eighteen."

"When all that crack and smack kept disappearing from the evidence locker? A few years ago?"

"Yeah. That was it. He's got serious wire all over the Big Building. The commissioner'll listen to him and he'll listen to me. He owes me." Then he waved his arm toward the Conjurer case evidence boards. "And, fuck, lookit what we just did. We nailed one hell of a doer. Lemme give him a call. Pull some strings for her."

And Rhyme's eyes too took in the charts, then the equipment, the examining tables, books – all devoted to the science of analyzing the evidence that Sachs had teased or muscled out of crime scenes over the past few years they'd been together.

"I don't know," he said.

"Whatsa problem?"

"If she made sergeant that way, well, she wouldn't be the one making it."

The detective replied, "You know what this promotion means to her, Linc."

Yeah, he did.

"Look, all we're doing is playing by Ramos's rules. He wants to take it down a notch we'll do the same. Make it a, you know, even playing field." Sellitto liked his idea. He added, "Amelia'll never find out. I'll tell my guy to keep the lid on it. He'll do it."

You know what this promotion means to her…

"So what do you think?" the detective asked.

Rhyme said nothing for a moment, looking for the answer in the silent forensic equipment surrounding him and then in the green mist of spring buds crowning the trees in Central Park.

• • •

The scuffs on the woodwork had been scrubbed away and all traces of the fire in the bedroom had been "vanished," as Thom had put it, rather cleverly, Rhyme thought. A rich scent of smoke lingered but that reminded Lincoln Rhyme of good scotch and was therefore not a problem at all.

Now, midnight, the room dark, Rhyme lay in his Flexicair bed, staring out the window. Outside was a flutter of motion as a falcon, one of God's most fluid creatures, landed on the ledge. Depending on the light, and their degree of alertness, the birds seemed to shrink or grow in size. Tonight they seemed larger than in the daylight, their forms magnificent. Menacing too; they weren't pleased with the noises radiating from the Cirque Fantastique in Central Park.

Well, Rhyme wasn't very happy about them either. He'd dozed off ten minutes ago only to be awakened by a loud burst of applause from the tent.

"They should have a curfew on that. Rhyme grumbled to Sachs, lying beside him in bed.

"I could shoot out their generator," she replied, her voice clear. She apparently hadn't gotten to sleep at all. Her head was on the pillow next to his, lips against his neck, on which he could feel the faint tickle of her hair and the smooth cool plane of her skin. Also: her breasts against his chest, belly to hip, leg over leg. He knew this only by observation, of course; there was no sensate proof of the contact. He relished that closeness all the same.

Sachs always adhered to Rhyme's firm rule that those walking the grid not wear scent because they might miss olfactory evidence at crime scenes. But she was off duty at the moment and he detected on her skin a pleasant, complex smell, which he deduced to be jasmine, gardenia and synthetic motor oil. They were alone in the apartment. They'd shipped Thom off to the movies with his friend Peter and had spent the night with some new CDs, two ounces of sevruga caviar, Ritz crackers, and copious Moet, despite the inherent difficulties in drinking champagne through a straw. Now, in the darkness, he was thinking again about music, about how such a purely mechanical system of tones and pacing could consume you so completely. It fascinated him. The more he thought about it, the more he decided that the subject might not be as mysterious as it seemed. Music was, after all, firmly rooted in his world: science, logic and mathematics.

How would one go about writing a melody? If the physical therapy exercises he was doing now eventually had some effect… could he actually press his fingers on a keyboard? As he was considering this he noticed Sachs looking up at his face in the dim light. "You heard about the sergeant's exam?" she asked.

A hesitation. Then: "Yep," he replied. He'd scrupulously avoided bringing up the matter all night; when Sachs was prepared to discuss something she would. Until then the subject didn't exist.

"You know what happened?" she asked.

"Not all the details. I assume it falls into the category of a quasi-corrupt, self-interested government official versus the overworked heroic crime-scene cop. Something like that?"

A laugh. "Pretty much."

"I've been there myself, Sachs."

The music from the circus kept thudding away, engendering mixed responses. Somehow you felt you should be irritated that it was intruding but you couldn't resist enjoying the beat.

She then asked, "Did Lon talk to you about pulling some strings for me? Making calls to city hall?"

Amelia'll never find out. I'll tell my guy to keep the lid on it…

He chuckled. "He did, yeah. You know Lon."

The music stopped. Then applause filled the night. The faint yet evocative sound of the MC's voice followed.

She said, "I heard he could've made the whole thing go away. Bypassed Ramos."

"Probably. He's got a long reach."

Sachs asked, "And what'd you say about that?"

"What do you think?"

"I'm asking."

Rhyme said, "I said no. I wouldn't let him do it."

"You wouldn't?"

"No. I told him you'd make rank on your own or not at all."

"Goddamn," she muttered.

He looked down at her, momentarily alarmed. Had he misjudged her?

"I'm pissed at Lon for even considering it."

"He meant well."

He believed that her arm around his chest gripped him tighter. "What you told him, Rhyme, that means more to me than anything."

"I know that."

"It could get ugly. Ramos's going for suspension. Twelve months off duty, no pay. I don't know what I'll do."

"You'll consult. With me."

"A civilian can't walk the grid, Rhyme. I have to sit still, I'll go crazy."

When you move they can't getcha…

"We'll get through it."

"Love you," she whispered. His response was to inhale her flowery Quaker State scent and tell her that he loved her too.

"Man, it's too bright." She looked toward the window, filled with glare from the circus spotlights. "Where're the shades?"

"Burned up, remember?"

"I thought Thom got some new ones."

"He started to put them up but he was fussing too much. Measuring and everything. I threw him out and told him to do it later."

Sachs slipped out of bed and found an extra sheet, draped it over the window, cutting out much of the light. She returned to bed, curled up against him and was soon asleep.

But not Lincoln Rhyme. As he lay listening to the music and the cryptic voice of the MC some ideas began to form in his mind and the opportunity for sleep came and went. Soon he was completely awake, lost in his thoughts.

Which were, not surprisingly, about the circus.

• • •

Late the next morning Thom walked into the bedroom to find that Rhyme had a visitor.

"Hi," he said to Jaynene Williams, sitting in one of the new chairs beside his bed.

"Thom." She shook his hand.

The aide, who'd been out shopping, was clearly surprised to see someone there. Thanks to the computer, the environmental control units and CCTV, Rhyme was, of course, perfectly capable of calling someone up, inviting them over and letting them inside when they arrived.

"No need to look so shocked," Rhyme said caustically. "I have invited people over before, you know."

"Blue moon comes to mind."

"Maybe I'll hire Jaynene here to replace you."

"Why don't you hire her as well as me? With two people here we could share the abuse." He smiled at her. "I wouldn't do that to you, though."

"I've handled worse."

"Are you a coffee lady or a tea lady?"

Rhyme said, "Sorry. Where were my manners? Should've had the pot boiling by now."

"Coffee'll do."

"Scotch for me," Rhyme said. When Thom glanced at the clock, the criminalist added, "A small shot for medicinal purposes."

"Coffee all around," the aide said and disappeared.

After he'd gone Rhyme and Jaynene made small talk about spinal cord injury patients and the exercises he was now pursuing fanatically. Then, impatient as ever, Rhyme decided he'd been the polite host long enough and lowered his voice to say, "There's a problem, something bothering me. I think you can help. I'm hoping you can."

She eyed him cautiously. "Maybe."

"Could you close the door?"

The large woman glanced at it, rose and then did as he asked. She returned to her seat.

"How long have you known Kara?" he asked.

"Kara? Little over a year. Ever since her mother came to Stuyvesant."

"That's an expensive place, isn't it?"

"Painfully," Jaynene said. "Terrible what they charge. But all of the places like ours, the fees're pretty much the same."

"Does her mother have insurance?"

"Medicare is all. Kara pays for most of it herself." She added, "As best she can. She's current now but she's in arrears a lot of the time."

Rhyme nodded slowly. "I'm going to ask you one more question. Think about it before you answer. And I need you to be completely honest."

"Well," the nurse said uncertainly, looking down at the newly varnished floor. "I'll do the best I can."

• • •

That afternoon Roland Bell was in Rhyme's living room. To the soundtrack of some enticing Dave Brubeck jazz piano they were talking about the evidence in the Andrew Constable case.

Charles Grady and the state's attorney general himself had decided to delay the man's trial in order to include additional charges against the bigot – attempted murder of his own lawyer, conspiracy to commit murder and felony murder. It wouldn't be an easy case – linking Constable to Barnes and the other conspirators in the Patriot Assembly – but if anyone could bring in convictions Grady was the man to do it. He was also going for the death penalty against Arthur Loesser for the murder of Patrol Officer Larry Burke, whose body had been found in an alley on the Upper West Side. Lon Sellitto was presently at the officer's full-dress funeral in Queens.

Amelia Sachs now walked through the doorway, looking frazzled after an all-day meeting with lawyers arranged through the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association about her possible suspension. She was supposed to have been back hours ago and, glancing at her face, Rhyme deduced that the results of the session were not good.

He himself had some news – about his meeting with Jaynene and what had happened after that – and had tried to reach her but had been unable to. Now, though, there was no time to brief her because another visitor appeared.

Thom ushered Edward Kadesky into the room. "Mr. Rhyme," he said, nodding. He'd forgotten Sachs's name but he gave her a second nod in greeting. He shook Roland Bell's hand. "I got your message. It said there's something more about the case."

Rhyme nodded. "This morning I did some digging, looking into a few loose ends."

"What loose ends?" Sachs asked.

"Ends I didn't know were loose. Unknown loose ends."

She frowned. The producer too looked troubled. "Weir's assistant – Loesser. He hasn't escaped, has he?"

"No, no. He's still in detention."

The doorbell rang. Thom vanished and a moment later Kara stepped through the doorway into the room. She looked around, ruffling her short hair, which had lost its purple sheen and was now ruddy as a freckle. "Hi," she said to the group, blinking in surprise when she saw Kadesky.

"Can I get anybody anything?" Thom asked.

"Maybe if you could leave us for a minute, Thom. Please."

The aide glanced at Rhyme and, hearing the firm, troubled tone in his voice, nodded and left the room. The criminalist said to Kara, "Thanks for coming by. I just need to follow up on a few things about the case."

"Sure," she said.

Loose ends…

Rhyme explained, "I want to know a few more details about the night that the Conjurer drove the ambulance bomb into the circus."

The young woman nodded, flicking her black fingernails against one another. "Anything I can do to help, I'd be glad to."

"The show was scheduled to start at eight, wasn't it?" Rhyme asked Kadesky.

"That's right."

"You weren't back from your dinner and radio interview yet when Loesser parked the ambulance in the doorway?"

"No, I wasn't."

Rhyme turned to Kara. "But you were there?"

"Yeah. I saw the ambulance drive in. I didn't think anything about it at the time."

"Where did Loesser park, exactly?"

"It was under the box seat scaffolding," she said.

"Not under the expensive seats though?" Rhyme asked Kadesky.

"No," the man said.

"So it was near the main fire exit – the one most people would use in an evacuation."

"That's right."

Bell asked, " Lincoln, what're you getting at?"

"What I'm getting at is Loesser parked the ambulance so that it would do the most damage and yet still give a few people in the box seats a chance to escape. How did he know exactly where to park it?"

"I don't know," the producer responded. "He probably checked it out ahead of time and saw it was the best location – I mean, best from his point of view. Worst for us."

"He might've checked it out earlier," Rhyme mused. "But he also would be reluctant to be seen doing reconnaissance around the circus – since we had officers stationed there."

"True."

"So, isn't it possible that someone on the inside might've told him to park there?"

"Inside?" Kadesky asked, frowning. "Are you saying somebody was helping him? No, none of my people would do that."

"Rhyme," Sachs said, "what are you getting at?"

He ignored her and turned again to Kara. "I asked you to go to the tent to find Mr. Kadesky about when?"

"I guess it was about seven-fifteen."

"And you were in the box seat area?" She nodded and he continued, "Near the exit row?"

The woman looked around the room awkwardly. "I guess. Yeah, I was." She looked at Sachs. "Why's he asking me all this? What's going on?"

Rhyme answered, "I'm asking because I remembered something you told us, Kara. About people who're involved in an illusionists act. There's the assistant – the person that we know is working with the illusionist. Then there's the volunteer from the audience. Then there's someone else: the confederate. Those're people who are actually working with the magician but seem to have nothing to do with him. They pretend to be stagehands or volunteers."

Kadesky said, "Right, lots of magicians use confederates."

Rhyme turned to Kara and said sharply, "Which is what you've been all along, haven't you?"

"What's that?" Bell asked, his drawl more pronounced in his surprise.

The young woman gasped, shaking her head.

"She's been working with Loesser from the beginning," Rhyme said to Sachs.

"No!" Kadesky said. "Her?"

Rhyme continued, "She needs money badly and Loesser paid her fifty thousand to help him."

Desperate, Kara said, "But Loesser and I never even met before today!"

"You didn't need to see him in person. Balzac was the intermediary. He was in on it too."

"Kara?" Sachs whispered. "No. I don't believe it. She wouldn't do that!"

"Wouldn't she? What do you know about her? Do you even know her real name?"

"I…" Sachs's troubled eyes turned toward the young woman. "No," she whispered. "She never told me."

Tearfully the young woman shook her head. Finally she said, "Amelia, I'm so sorry… But you don't understand… Mr. Balzac and Weir were friends. They performed together for years and he was devastated when Weir died in the fire. Loesser told Mr. Balzac what he was going to do and they forced me to help him. But, you have to believe me, I didn't know they were going to hurt anybody. Mr. Balzac said it was just an extortion thing – to get even with Mr. Kadesky. By the time I realized Loesser was killing people it was too late. They said if I didn't keep helping him he was going to give my name to the police. I'd go to jail forever. Mr. Balzac would too…" She wiped her face. "I couldn't do that to him."

"To your revered mentor," Rhyme said bitterly.

With a look of panic in her brilliant blue eyes the young woman shoved her way through Sachs and Kadesky and leaped for the door.

"Stop her, Roland!" Rhyme shouted.

Bell sprinted forward and tackled her. They tumbled into the corner of the room. She was strong but Bell managed to cuff her. He rose, panting from the effort, and pulled his Motorola off his belt, calling in for a prisoner transfer down to detention.

Looking disgusted, he put the radio away and read Kara her rights.

Rhyme sighed. "I tried to tell you earlier, Sachs. I couldn't get through on the phone. I wish it weren't true. But there you have it. She and Balzac were with Loesser all along. They gulled us like we were their audience."

Chapter Fifty-one

Whispering, the policewoman said, "I just… I don't see how she did it."

Rhyme said to Bell, "She manipulated the evidence, lied to us, planted fake clues… Roland, go over to the whiteboards. I'll show you."

"Kara planted evidence?" Sachs asked, astonished.

"Oh, you bet she did. And she did a damn good job too. From the first scene, even before you found her. You told me that she gave you that sign to meet her in the coffee shop. They set it up from the beginning."

Bell was at the whiteboards and as he pointed out items of evidence Rhyme would explain how Kara had tricked them.

A moment later Thom called, "There's an officer here."

"Show 'em in," Rhyme said.

A policewoman walked through the doorway and joined Sachs, Bell and Kadesky, surveying them through stylish glasses with a look of curiosity on her face. She nodded to Rhyme, and in a Hispanic accent, asked Bell, "You called for prisoner transport, Detective?"

Bell nodded to the corner of the room. "She's over there. I Mirandized her."

The woman glanced toward the corner of the room at Kara's prone form and said, "Okay, I'll take her downtown." She hesitated. "But I got a question first."

"Question?" Rhyme asked, frowning.

"What're you talking about, Officer?" Bell asked.

Ignoring the detective, the officer sized up Kadesky. "Could I see some identification, sir?"

"Me?" the producer asked.

"Yessir. I'll need to see your driver's license."

"You want my ID again? I did that the other day."

"Sir, please."

Huffily the man reached into his hip pocket and withdrew his wallet.

Except that it wasn't his.

He stared at a battered zebra-skin billfold. "Wait, I… I don't know what this is."

"It's not yours?" the cop asked.

"No," he said, troubled. He began patting his pockets. "I don't know -"

"See, that's what I was afraid of," the policewoman said. "I'm sorry, sir. You're under arrest for pickpocketing. You have the right to remain silent -"

"This is bullshit," Kadesky muttered. "There's some mistake." He opened up the wallet and stared at it for a moment. Then he barked an astonished laugh, held up the driver's license for everyone to see. It was Kara's.

There was a handwritten note inside. It dropped out. He picked it up. "It says, 'Gotcha,'" Kadesky said, narrowing his eyes and studying the policewoman closely, then the driver's license. "Wait, is this you?"

The "officer" laughed and removed the glasses then her cop cap and the brunette wig beneath it, revealing the short reddish hair once again. With a towel that Roland Bell, now chuckling hard, handed her she wiped the dark-complexion makeup off her face and peeled away the thick eyebrows and the fake red nails covering the black glossy ones. She then took her wallet back from the hands of the astonished Edward Kadesky and handed him his, which she'd dipped when she'd plowed into him and Sachs in her "escape" toward the door.

Sachs was shaking her head, too astonished to react. She and Kadesky were both staring at the body lying on the floor.

The young illusionist walked into the corner and lifted the device, a lightweight frame in the shape of a person lying on her stomach. Short reddish-purple hair covered the head portion, and the body wore clothing that resembled the jeans and windbreaker Kara'd been in when Bell had cuffed her. The arms of the outfit ended in what turned out to be latex hands, hooked together with Bell 's handcuffs, which Kara had escaped from and then relatched on the phony wrists.

"It's a feke," Rhyme now announced to the room, nodding at the frame. "A phony Kara."

When Sachs and the others had turned away – misdirected by Rhyme toward the chart – Kara had escaped from the cuffs, unfurled the body frame and then silently slipped out the door to do the quick change in the hallway.

She now folded up the device, which compressed into a little package the size of a small pillow – she'd had it hidden under her jacket when she'd arrived. The dummy wouldn't have passed close examination but in the shadows, with an unsuspecting, misdirected audience, no one had noticed it wasn't the girl.

Kadesky was shaking his head. "You did the whole escape and the quick change in less than a minute?"

"Forty seconds."

"How?"

"You saw the effect," Kara said to him. "Think I'll keep the method to myself."

"So the point of this is, I assume," said Kadesky cynically, "that you want an audition?"

Kara hesitated and Rhyme shot a prodding glance toward the young woman.

"No, the point is, this was the audition. I want a job."

Kadesky studied her closely. "It was one trick. You have others?"

"Plenty."

"How many changes've you done in one show?"

"Forty-two changes. Thirty characters. During a thirty-minute routine."

"Forty-two setups in half an hour?" the producer asked, eyebrows raised.

"Yep."

He debated for only a few seconds. "Come see me next week. I'm not cutting back my current artists' time in the ring. But they could use an assistant and an understudy. And maybe you can do some shows at our winter camp in Florida."

Rhyme and Kara exchanged glances. He nodded firmly.

"Okay," the young woman said to Kadesky. She shook his hand.

Kadesky glanced at the spring-loaded wire form that had fooled them. "You made that?"

"Yep."

"You might want to patent it."

"I never thought about that. Thanks. I'll look into it."

He looked her over again. "Forty-two in thirty minutes." Then nodding, he left the room. Both he and Kara looked as if they'd each bought a very nice, very underpriced sports car.

Sachs laughed. "Damn, you had me going." A glance at Rhyme. "Both of you."

"Wait up here," Bell said, feigning hurt. "I was in on it too. I'm the one hog-tied her."

Sachs shook her head again. "When did you think this up?"

It had started last night, Rhyme explained, lying in bed, listening to the music from Cirque Fantastique, the ringmaster's muted voice, the applause and laughter from the crowd. His thoughts had segued to Kara, how good her performance at Smoke & Mirrors had been. Recalling her lack of self-confidence and Balzac's sway over her.

Recalling too what Sachs had told him about her mother's advanced senility. Which had prompted Rhyme's invitation to Jaynene the next morning.

"I'm going to ask you one more question," Rhyme had said to the woman. "Think about it before you answer. And I need you to be completely honest."

The query was: "Will her mother ever come out of it?"

Jaynene had said, "Will she get back her mind, is that what you're askin'?"

"That's right. Will she recover?"

"No."

"So Kara's not taking her to England?"

A sad laugh. "No, no, no. That woman's not going anywhere."

"Kara said she couldn't quit her job because she needs to keep her mother in the nursing home."

"She needs to be cared for, sure. But not at our place. Kara's paying for rehab and recreation, medical intervention. Short-term care. Kara's mom doesn't even know what year it is. She could be anywhere. Sorry to say it but all she needs is maintenance at this point."

"What'll happen to her if she goes to a long-term home?"

"She'll keep getting worse until the end. Just the same as if she stayed with us. Only it wouldn't bankrupt Kara."

After that, Jaynene and Thom had gone off to have lunch together – and undoubtedly to share war stories about the people in their care. Rhyme had then called Kara. She'd come over and they'd had a talk. The conversation had been awkward; he'd never done well with personal matters. Confronting a heartless killer was easy compared with intruding on the tender soul of someone's life.

"I don't know your profession too well," Rhyme had said. "But when I saw you perform at the store on Sunday I was impressed. And it takes a lot to impress me. You were damn good."

"For a student" had been her dismissive response.

"No," he'd said firmly, "for a performer. You should be onstage."

"I'm not ready yet. I'll get there eventually."

After a thick pause Rhyme said, "The problem with that attitude is that sometimes you don't get there eventually." He glanced down at his body. "Sometimes things… intervene. And there you are, you've put off something important. And you miss it forever."

"But Mr. Balzac -"

"- is keeping you down. It's obvious."

"He's only thinking what's best for me."

"No, he's not. I don't know what he's thinking of. But the one thing he's not thinking of is you. Look at Weir and Loesser. And Keating. Mentors can mesmerize you. Thank Balzac for what he's done, stay friends, send him box seat tickets for your first Carnegie Hall show. But get away from him now – while you can."

"I'm not mesmerized," she'd said, laughing.

Rhyme hadn't responded and he sensed she was considering just how much she was under the man's thumb. He continued, "We've got some juice with Kadesky – after everything we've done. Amelia told me how much you like the Cirque Fantastique. I think you should audition."

"Even if I did, I have a personal situation. My -"

"Mother," Rhyme'd interrupted.

"Right."

"I had a talk with Jaynene."

The woman had fallen silent.

Rhyme'd said, "Let me tell you a story."

"Story?"

"I headed the forensics department here in New York. The job had the typical administrative crap, you can imagine. But the thing I loved most – and what I was best at – was running crime scenes, so even after I was promoted I still got into the field as often as I could. Well, we had a serial rapist working in the Bronx a few years ago. I won't go into the details but it was an ugly situation and I wanted that man nailed. I wanted him bad. I got a call from patrol that there'd been another attack, just a half hour before, and it looked like there was some good evidence. I went uptown to run the scene personally."

"Just as I got there I found out my second in command – and a good friend of mine – had had a heart attack. A bad one. Big shock. He was a young guy, in good shape. Anyway, he was asking for me." Rhyme had pushed down a hard memory and continued, "But I stayed and ran the scene, filled out the chain of custody cards and then went to the hospital. I got there as fast as I could but I was too late. He'd died a half hour before. I wasn't proud of that. It still hurts me after all these years. But I wouldn't've done it different."

"So your point is that I should put my mother in some shitty home," she'd said bitterly. "A cheaper one. Just so I can be happy."

"Of course not. Put her someplace that'll give her what she needs – care and companionship. Not what you need. Not a rehab center that's going to bankrupt you… My point? It's that if there's something you know you're meant to do in life, that has to take priority over everything else. Get a job with Cirque Fantastique. Or another show. But you have to move on."

"Do you know what some of those homes are like?"

"Well, then your job is to find one that you're both comfortable with. Sorry to be blunt. But I told you up front I don't do well with delicacy."

She'd shaken her head. "Look, Lincoln, even if I decided to, do you know how many people'd die for a job at Cirque Fantastique? They get a hundred résumés a week."

Finally he'd smiled. "Well, now, I've been thinking about that. The Immobilized Man has an idea for a routine I think we should try."

Rhyme now finished telling Sachs the story.

Kara said, "We thought we'd call the trick the Escaping Suspect. I'm going to add it to my repertoire."

Sachs turned to Rhyme. "And the reason you didn't tell me before was…?"

"I'm sorry. You were downtown. I couldn't get through."

"Well, it might've worked better if you'd told me. You could've left a message."

"I. Am. Sorry. There. I've apologized. I don't do it very often, you know. I'd think you might appreciate it. Though, now that you brought it up, I don't really see how it could've worked better. The look on your face was priceless. Added to the credibility."

"And Balzac?" Sachs asked. "He didn't know Weir? He wasn't really involved?"

Rhyme nodded at Kara. "Pure fiction. We wrote the script, the two of us."

Sachs eyed the young woman. "First you get stabbed to death when I'm supposed to be looking out for you. Then you turn into a murder suspect." The policewoman gave an exasperated sigh. "This could be a difficult friendship."

Kara offered to run up the street to get some more Cuban takeout, which they'd missed the other day, though Rhyme suspected it was just an excuse for her to pick up another one of the restaurant's sludgy coffees. But before they could decide on the order they were interrupted by Rhyme's ringing phone. He ordered, "Command, answer phone." A moment later Sellitto's voice came on the speakerphone. "Linc, you busy?"

"Depends," he grumbled. "What's up?"

"No rest for the wicked… We need your help again. We got a weird homicide."

"Last one was 'bizarre,' if I remember correctly. I think you just say things like that to get my attention."

"No, really, we can't figure this one out."

"All right, all right," the criminalist grumbled, "give me the details."

Though the translation of Lincoln Rhyme's gruff demeanor was simply how pleased he was that boredom would be held at bay for at least a little while longer.

• • •

Kara stood outside Smoke & Mirrors, seeing things she'd never noticed in her year and a half working there. A hole in the upper left-hand corner of the plate glass from a BB or pellet gunshot. A tiny swirl of graffiti on the door. A dusty book on Houdini in the window, opened to the page discussing the type of sash cord he preferred to use in his routines.

She saw a flare inside the store – Mr. Balzac lighting a cigarette.

A breath. Let's do it, she thought and pushed inside.

He was by the counter with that friend of his who'd been in town this past weekend, an illusionist from California. Balzac introduced her as a student and the middle-aged man shook her hand. They made small talk about how his performance had gone last night, other people appearing in town… the typical gossip performers everywhere engage in. Finally the man picked up his suitcase. He was on his way to Kennedy airport for the flight home and had stopped at the store to return the props he'd borrowed. He embraced Balzac, nodded to Kara and left the store.

"You're late," the magician said to her gruffly. Then observed that she wasn't putting her bag behind the counter as she always did. He glanced at her hands. No coffee cup. That was, of course, the giveaway.

A frown. "What?" he asked, drawing on his cigarette. "Tell me."

"I'm leaving."

"You're…"

"I talked to Ed Kadesky. I've got a job with the Cirque Fantastique."

"Them? Kadesky? No, no, no – it's all wrong for you. That's not magic. That's -"

"It's what I want to do."

"We've been through this a dozen times. You're not ready. You're good. You're not great."

"That doesn't matter," she said firmly. "What matters is getting up onstage. Performing."

"If you rush it -"

"Rush it, David? Rush it? When would I be ready? Next year? In five years?"

Normally she found it difficult to hold his eye; today she looked straight at him as she said, "Would you ever let me go?"

A pause, while he ordered papers, slapped them down on the scuffed, cracked counter. "Kadesky," he scoffed. "And what'll you be doing for him?"

"Assistant at first. Then some winter season shows of my own in Florida. Then who knows?"

He stubbed out the cigarette. "It's a mistake. You'll be wasting your talent. What he does, it's not the kind of illusion I taught you."

"I got the job because of what you taught me."

"Kadesky," he said again contemptuously. "New magic."

"Yeah, it is," she said. "But I'll be doing your routines too. Metamorphosis, remember – the old becoming new."

He didn't smile though she could sense the reference to his act pleased him.

"David, I want to keep studying with you. When I'm back in town I want to take lessons. I'll pay for them."

"I don't think that would work. You can't serve two masters," the man muttered.

When Kara said nothing he said grudgingly, "We'll have to see. I might not have the time. I probably won't."

She hitched her purse higher on her shoulder.

"Right now?" he asked. "You're leaving now?"

"Yeah. I think it's best."

He nodded.

"So," Kara said.

The illusionist said a formal "Goodbye then" and stepped behind the counter, offering nothing else.

Struggling to keep the tears at bay, she walked to the door.

"Wait," he called as she started outside. Balzac stepped into the back of the store and then returned to her. He held something in his hand and thrust it into hers. It was the cigar box that contained Tarbell's three colored silks.

"Here. Take these… I liked the way you did that one. It was a tight trick."

She remembered the praise she'd received for it. Ah…

Kara stepped forward and embraced him fast, thinking that this was the first physical contact they'd had since she shook his hand when she'd met him eighteen months ago.

He gave her an awkward hug in return and then stepped back.

Kara walked outside, paused and turned to wave but Balzac had vanished into the dim recesses of the store. She slipped the box of silks into her purse and started toward Sixth Avenue, which would take her downtown to her apartment.

Chapter Fifty-two

The homicide was indeed a weird one.

A double murder in a deserted part of Roosevelt Island – that narrow strip of apartments, hospitals and ghostly ruins in the East River. Since the tramway deposits residents not far from the United Nations in Manhattan many diplomats and U.N. employees live on the island.

And it was two of these individuals – junior emissaries from the Balkans – who'd been found murdered, each shot in the back of the head twice, their hands bound.

There were several curious things that Amelia Sachs had turned up when she'd run the scene. She'd found ash from a type of cigarette that wasn't in the state or federal tobacco database, traces of a plant that wasn't indigenous to the metropolitan area and imprints of a heavy suitcase that had been set down and apparently opened next to the victims after they'd been shot.

And strangest of all was the fact that each man was missing his right shoe. They were nowhere to be found. "Both of them the right shoe, Sachs," Rhyme said, looking at the evidence board, in front of which he sat and she paced. "What do we make of that?"

But the question was put on hold temporarily by Sachs's ringing cell phone. It was Captain Marlow's secretary, asking if she could come down to a meeting at his office. Several days had passed since they'd closed the Conjurer case, several days since she learned about Victor Ramos's action against her. There'd been no further word about the suspension.

"When?" Sachs asked.

"Well, now," the woman replied.

Sachs disconnected and, with a glance and tight-lipped smile toward Rhyme, she said, "This's it. Gotta go."

They held each other's eyes for a moment. Then Rhyme nodded and she headed for the door.

A half hour later Sachs was in Captain Gerald Marlow's office, sitting across from the man, who was reading one of his ever-present manila files. "One second, Officer." He continued reviewing whatever so absorbed him, jotting occasional notes.

She fidgeted. Picking at a cuticle, then at a nail. Two grass-growing minutes went by. Oh, Jesus Christ, she thought and finally asked, "Okay, sir. What's the story? Did he back down?"

Marlow marked a spot on the sheet he was reading and looked up. "Who?"

"Ramos. About the sergeant's exam?"

And that other vindictive prick – the lecherous cop from the assessment exercise.

"Back down?" Marlow asked. He was surprised at her naiveté. "Well, Officer, that was never an option, him backing down."

So that left only one reason for a face-to-face – an understanding that came to her with the sharp clarity of the first pistol shot at an outdoor range. That first shot… before your muscles and ears and skin grow numb from the repeated fire. Only one reason for her to be summoned here. Marlow was going to take possession of her weapon and her shield. She was now suspended.

Shitshitshit…

She bit the inside of her lip.

Easing the folder closed, Marlow looked at her in a fatherly way, which unnerved her; it was as if the punishment to which she'd been sentenced was so severe that she needed the buffer zone of paternal kindness. "People like Ramos, Officer, you're not going to beat 'em. Not on their turf. You won the battle, cuffing him at the scene. But he won the war. People like that always win the war."

"You mean stupid people? Petty people? Greedy people?"

Once again the genetic makeup of a career police officer stopped him from even acknowledging the question.

"Look at this desk," he said as he did just that. It was awash in paper. Stacks and piles of folders and memos. "And I remember when I used to complain about all the paperwork when I was a portable." He rummaged through one of the stacks, apparently looking for something. Gave up. Tried another pile. He came up with several documents that weren't what he wanted either and took his own sweet time reorganizing them then resuming the search again.

Oh, Pop, I never thought a suspension'd really go through.

Then, within her, the sorrow and disappointment formed into a rock. And she thought: Okay, that's the way they're going to play? Maybe I'm going down but they'll hurt. Ramos and all the little prick Ramoses like him're are going to lick blood.

Knuckle time…

"Right," the captain said, finally finding what he wanted, a large envelope with a piece of paper stapled to it. He read it quickly. Glanced at a clock in the shape of a ship's wheel on his desk. "Darn, look at the time. Let's get on with it, Officer. Let me have your shield."

Heartsick, she dug dutifully into her pocket. "How long?"

"A year, Officer," Marlow said. "Sorry."

Suspended for a year, she thought in despair. She'd imagined three months at the worst.

"That's the best I could do. A year. Shield, I was asking." Marlow shook his head. "Sorry for the rush. I've got another meeting any minute now. Meetings – they drive me crazy. This one's about insurance. The public thinks all we do is catch perps. Or thinks we don't catch perps, more likely. Uhn-uhn – half the job is business bushwah. You know what my father called business? 'Busy-ness.' He worked for American Standard for thirty-nine years. Sales rep. B-U-S-Y-ness. True about our job too." He held out his hand.

Dismay pooling around her, drowning her, she handed him the battered leather case containing the silver shield and ID card.

Badge Number Five Eight Eight Five…

What could she do? Be a fucking security guard?

Behind him the captain's phone rang and he spun around to answer it.

"Marlow here… Yessir… We've got security arranged for that." And as he continued to talk to the caller, something about the Andrew Constable trial, it seemed, the captain placed the interoffice envelope in his lap.

He pinched the phone in the crook of his neck, turned back to face Sachs and continued his conversation as he unwound the red thread that was twisted around the clasps to keep the envelope sealed.

Droning on about the trial, the new charges against Constable and others in the Patriot Assembly, raids up in Canton Falls. Sachs noted the man's perfectly nuanced, respectful tone, how he played the deference game so perfectly. Maybe he was talking to the mayor or governor.

Maybe Congressman Ramos.

Playing the game, playing politics… Is this what police work is really about? It was so far from her nature that she wondered if she had any business being a cop.

No busy-ness.

That thought tore her apart. Oh, Rhyme. What're we going to do?

We'll get through it, he'd said. But life isn't about getting through. Getting through is losing.

Marlow, still pinching the phone between ear and shoulder, was rambling on and on in the language of government. He finally got the envelope opened and dropped her shield into it.

He then reached in and extracted something wrapped in tissue paper.

"… don't have time for a ceremony. We'll do something later." This latter message was whispered and it seemed to Sachs he was speaking to her.

Ceremony?

A glance at her. Now another whisper, his hand over the receiver. "This insurance stuff. Who understands it? I've got to learn all about mortality tables, annuities, double indemnity…"

Marlow unwrapped the tissue, revealing a gold NYPD badge.

Back in his normal voice as he spoke into the phone: "Yessir, we'll stay on top of that situation… We've got people in Bedford Junction too. And Harrisonburg up the road. We're completely proactive."

Whispering again, to her. "Kept your old number, Officer." He held up the badge, which glistened brilliant yellow. The numbers were the same as her Patrol ID: 5885. He slipped the badge into her leather shield holder. Then he found something else in the yellow envelope: a temporary ID, which he also mounted in the holder. Then handed it back.

The card identified her as Amelia Sachs, detective third-grade.

"Yessir, we've heard about that and our threat assessment is that it's a handleable situation… Good, sir." Marlow hung up and shook his head.

"Give me a bigot's trial any day over insurance meetings. Okay, Officer, you'll need to get your picture taken for your permanent ID." He considered something then added cautiously, "This isn't a chauvinist thing so don't take it the wrong way but they like it better with women's hair pulled back. Not down and all, you know, well, down. Looks tougher, I guess. You have a problem with that?"

"But, I'm not suspended?"

"Suspended? No, you made detective. Didn't they call you? O'Connor was supposed to call you. Or his assistant or somebody."

Dan O'Connor, the head of the Detective Bureau.

"Nobody called me. Except your secretary."

"Oh, well. They were supposed to call."

"What happened?"

"I told you I'd do what I could. I did. I mean, let's face it – there was no way I was letting you go on suspension. Can't afford to lose you." He hesitated, looked at the tide of files. "Not to mention, it would've been a nightmare to go up against you in a PBA suit or arbitration. Would've been ugly."

Thinking: Oh, yessir, it would've been. Real ugly. "But the year? You mentioned something about year."

"That's the sergeant's exam I was talking about. You can't take it again until next April. It's civil service and there was nothing I could do about that. But reassigning you to the Detective Bureau, that's discretionary. Ramos couldn't stop that. You'll report to Lon Sellitto."

She stared at the golden shield. "I don't know what to say."

"You can say, 'Thank you very much, Captain Marlow. I've enjoyed working with you in Patrol Services all these years. And I regret I will no longer be doing so.'"

"That's a joke, Officer. I do have a sense of humor despite what you hear. Oh, you're third-grade, you might've noticed."

"Yessir." Struggling to keep the breathless grin off her face. "I – "

"If you want to make it all the way to first-grade and sergeant I'd think long and hard about who you arrest – or detain – at crime scenes. And, for that matter, how you talk to who. Just some advice."

"Noted, sir."

"Now if you'll excuse me, Officer… I mean, Detective. I've got about five minutes to learn everything there is to know about insurance."

Outside, on Center Street, Amelia Sachs walked around her Camaro, examining the damage to the side and front end from the collision with Loesser's Mazda in Harlem.

It'd take some major work to get the poor vehicle in shape again.

Cars were her forte, of course, and she knew the location, as well as the head shape, length and torque, of every screw and bolt in the vehicle. And she probably had all the ding-pullers, ball-peen hammers, grinders and other tools she needed in her Brooklyn garage to fix most of the damage herself.

Yet Sachs didn't enjoy bodywork. She found it boring – the same way that being a fashion model had been boring and that going out with handsome, cocky, bang-bang cops had been boring. Not to put too much of a shrinks spin on it but maybe there was something within her that distrusted the cosmetic, the superficial.

For Amelia Sachs the substance of cars was in their hearts and hot souls: the furious drumbeat of rods and pistons, the whine of belts, the perfect kiss of gears that turned a ton of metal and leather and plastic into pure speed.

She decided she'd take the car to a shop in Astoria, Queens, one she'd used before, where the mechanics were talented, more or less honest and had a reverence for power wheels like this.

Easing now into the front seat, she fired up the engine, whose gutsy rattle caught the attention of a half-dozen cops, lawyers and businesspeople nearby.

Pulling out of the police lot, she also made another decision. A few years ago, after some rust work, she'd decided to have the factory-black car repainted.

She'd opted for vibrant yellow. The choice had been impulsive, but why not? Shouldn't whims be reserved for decisions about the color of your toenails, your hair and your vehicles?

But now she thought that since the shop would have to replace a quarter of the Chevy's sheet metal and it would need repainting anyway, she'd pick a different hue. Fire-engine red was her immediate choice. This shade had a double meaning to her. Not only was it the color her father always said that muscle cars ought to be but it would also match Rhyme's own sporty vehicle, his Storm Arrow wheelchair. This was just the sort of sentiment that the criminalist would appear wholly indifferent to but that would privately please him no end.

Yep, she reflected, red it would be.

She thought about dropping the Chevy off now but, on reflection, decided to wait. She could drive a beat-up car for a few more days; she'd done that plenty in her teen years. At the moment she wanted to get back home, to Lincoln Rhyme, to share the news with him about the alchemy that had transformed her badge from silver to gold – and to get back to work unraveling the thorny mysteries that awaited them: two murdered diplomats, alien vegetation, curious imprints in muddy ground and a couple of missing shoes.

Both of them right.