The Vanished Man (Lincoln Rhyme 5)

Running forward, she found, resting on the cobblestones near a pile of garbage, a pair of handcuffs, open. Next to them was a plastic hog tie, which had been severed. Bell ran up beside her.

"He got out of the goddamn cuffs and cut the restraint." Sachs looked around.

"Well, where are they?" one of the uniformed officers asked.

"Where's Larry?" another one called.

"In pursuit?" somebody else offered. "Maybe he's out of reception area."

"Maybe," drawled Bell, the concern in his tone reflecting the fact that the workhorse Motorolas rarely malfunctioned and their reception in the city was better than most cell phones'.

Bell called in a 10-39, escaped suspect, with an officer missing or in pursuit. He asked the dispatcher if there'd been any transmissions from Burke but was told there'd been none. No third-party reports of shots fired in the vicinity either.

Sachs walked the length of the alley, looking for any clues that might suggest where the killer had gone or where the Conjurer might've dumped the patrol officer's body if he'd gotten control of Burke's gun and killed him. But neither she nor Bell found any sign of the officer or the perp. She returned to the cluster of cops at the mouth of the alley.

What a terrible day. Two dead this morning. Kara too.

And now a police officer was missing.

Her hand rose to the speaker/mike of her SP-50 handy-talkie and pulled it off her shoulder. Time to tell Rhyme. Oh, brother. Don't want to make this call. She called in to Central on the radio and asked for a patch. As she was waiting for the call to go through she felt a tug on her sleeve.

Sachs turned. As she inhaled a shocked breath the mike slipped from her hand and swung at her side, a pendulum.

Two people stood in front of her. One was the balding officer Sachs had been giving orders to at the fair ten minutes ago.

The other was Kara, wearing an NYPD windbreaker. Frowning, the young woman looked up and down the alley. She asked, "So where is he?"

Chapter Nineteen "Are you all right?" Sachs stammered. "What . . . Wait, what happened?"

"All right? Yeah, I'm fine. . . ." Kara took in the woman's astonished gaze and said, "You mean you didn't know?"

The balding officer said to Sachs, "I tried to tell you. But you ran off before I had a chance."

"Tell me . . . ?" Sachs's voice stopped working. She was so stunned--and riddled with relief--that she couldn't speak.

"You thought I was really hurt?" Kara said. "Oh, God."

Bell walked up, nodding a greeting to Kara, who said, "Amelia didn't know."

"About?"

"Our plan. The fake stabbing."

The expression on Bell's face was pure shock. "Lord, you thought she was really dead?"

The patrol officer repeated to Bell, "I tried to let her know. First, I couldn't find her and then, when I did, she just tells me to seal the scene and call the M.E. and takes off."

Kara explained, "Roland and I were talking? And we figured that the Conjurer was going to hurt somebody for real--maybe set a fire or shoot or stab somebody. You know, to misdirect us so he could get away. So we thought we'd make up our own misdirection."

"To flush that boy outta the brush," Bell added. "She got some catsup at the concession stand, squirted it on herself, screamed then fell down."

Kara opened the blue windbreaker to reveal the red stain on her purple tank top.

The detective continued, "Was worried a few folks at the fair'd be all tore up over it--"

Well, I'd guess . . .

"--but we were thinking that'd be better than somebody really getting clocked or stabbed by the Conjurer." Bell added proudly, "Was her idea. No foolin'."