The Vanished Man (Lincoln Rhyme 5)

"I'm getting a feel for how he thinks," the young woman said.

"Jesus." Sachs found herself trembling. "It was so real."

Bell nodded. "She does dead good."

Sachs gave her a hug then said sternly, "But from now on, stay close. Or keep me in the loop. I'm too young for heart attacks."

They waited a short while but no reports came in of suspects spotted in the area. Finally Bell said, "You search the scene here, Amelia. I'm going to go interview the victim. See if she can tell us anything. Meet you back at the fair."

A crime scene bus was parked on Eighty-eighth Street. She walked to it and began to collect her equipment to run the scene. A voice clattered through her dangling speaker, startling her. She pulled her handsfree headset off her belt and plugged it in. Eight Eight Five. Repeat, K."

"Sachs, what the hell's going on? I heard you had him and now he's gone?"

She told Rhyme what had happened, about flushing the Conjurer from the fair.

"Kara's idea? Playing dead? Hmm." The final sound--a grunt really--was a high compliment, coming from Lincoln Rhyme.

"But he's disappeared," Sachs added. "And we can't find that officer either. Maybe he's in pursuit. But we don't know. Roland's interviewing the woman we saved. See if she has any leads."

"Okay, well, run the scene, Sachs."

"Scenes plural," she corrected sourly. "The coffee shop, the pond and the alley here. Too damn many."

"Not too many at all," he replied. "Three times the chance to find some good evidence."

*

Rhyme had been right.

The three scenes had yielded a good amount of evidence.

They'd been difficult to work, though for an unusual reason: the Conjurer had been present at each one--his phantom, at least. Hovering nearby. Making her pause often to tap the grip of her Glock, turning around and making sure the killer hadn't materialized behind her.

Search well but watch your back.

She never actually saw anyone. But then Svetlana Rasnikov hadn't seen her killer shed the black camouflage and creep up behind her from the shadows.

Tony Calvert hadn't seen him hiding behind the mirror in the alley when he'd walked toward the fake cat.

And even Cheryl Marston hadn't truly seen the Conjurer though she'd sat and talked with him. She'd seen someone else entirely, never suspecting the terrible death he had planned for her.

Sachs walked the grids at the various locations, took digital photos and released the scenes to Latents and Photo. She then returned to the fair, where she met Roland Bell. He'd interviewed Cheryl Marston at the hospital. They of course couldn't rely on anything the killer had told her ("Pack of goddamn lies," Marston had summarized bitterly) but she remembered some details from before the drug reached its full effect. She gave a good description of him, including particulars about the scars. She also recalled that he'd stopped at a car. She remembered the make and the first few letters of the tag. This was good news. There are a hundred ways to trace a car to a perpetrator or witness. Lincoln Rhyme called cars "evidence generators."

DMV had reported that a car matching the description--a 2001 tan Mazda 626--had been stolen from the White Plains airport a week ago. Sellitto put out an emergency vehicle locator request to all law enforcement agencies in the metro area and sent officers to check the blocks around the site of the attack to see if they could find the car, though neither officer had much faith that it would still be there.

Bell was concluding his narrative about Cheryl Marston's harrowing ordeal when a patrol officer taking a radio call interrupted him.

"Detective Bell? What was that car again? The one the perp was driving?"

"Tan Mazda. Six two six. Tag's F-E-T two three seven."

"That's it," the officer said into his mike. Then to Bell and Sachs he added, "Just got a report--RMP spotted him on Central Park West. They went after him but--get this--he drove over the curb into the park itself. The RMP tried to follow but got stuck on the embankment."

"CPW and what?" Sachs asked.

"Around Nine-two."

"He probably bailed," Bell said.