The Vanished Man (Lincoln Rhyme 5)

"Lady, do you have any idea--"

"Cuff him," she said. "Then get him the hell out of there." Deciding that the community relations part of the sergeant's handbook slogan took second place to criminal investigation in this case.

The officers ratcheted the cuffs on the red-faced man and he was led, fuming and cursing, out of the scene. "Want we should book him?" one officer called.

"Naw, just put him in time-out for a while," she shouted, drawing laughter from some of the onlookers. She watched him being deposited in the back of a squad car, yet another obstacle in the seemingly impossible search for an elusive killer.

Sachs then dressed in the Tyvek outfit and armed with camera and collection bags, and with rubber bands at last on her feet, she waded into the scene, starting with the remains of Carlos's destroyed mansion. She took her time and searched carefully. After this harrowing daylong pursuit Amelia Sachs was accepting nothing at face value. True, the Conjurer might be floating forty feet below the surface of the gray-brown water. But he could just as easily be crawling safely up the riverbank nearby.

She wouldn't even have been surprised to find out that he was already miles away, dressed in a new disguise, stalking his next victim.

*

The Reverend Ralph Swensen had been in town for several days--his first visit to New York City--and he'd decided he could never get used to the place.

The thin man, somewhat balding, somewhat shy, ministered to souls in a town thousands of times smaller than and dozens of years removed from Manhattan.

Whereas at home he looked out the window of his church to see rolling acres of land where placid animals grazed, here he looked out the barred window of his cheap hotel room near Chinatown and saw a brick wall with a swirl of grainy spray paint that was part of an obscenity.

Whereas at home when he walked down the street of his town, people would say, "Hello, Reverend," or "Great sermon, Ralph," here they would say, "Gimme a dollar," or "I got AIDS," or simply "Suck me."

Still, Reverend Swensen was here only for a brief time so he supposed he could survive a little culture shock for a bit longer.

For the past several hours he'd been trying to read the ancient, crumbling Gideon Bible the hotel had provided. But finally he gave up. The Gospel according to St. Matthew, as compelling as that story was, couldn't compete with the sound of a gay hooker and his client banging away at each other and howling loudly in pain or pleasure or, most likely, both.

The reverend knew he should be honored to have been picked for this mission to New York but he felt like the Apostle Paul on one of his missionary quests among the nonbelievers in Greece and Asia Minor, greeted with only derision and scorn.

Ah, ah, ah, ah . . . Right there, right there . . . Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it that's it that's . . .

Okay, that was it. Even Paul hadn't had to put up with this level of depravity. The concert recital wasn't scheduled to start for several hours but Reverend Swensen decided to leave early. He brushed his hair, found his glasses and tossed the Bible, a map of the city and a sermon he was working on in his attache case. He took the stairs to the lobby, where another prostitute was sitting. This one was--or appeared to be--a woman.

Our Father in heaven, full of grace . . .

A knot of tension in his gut, he hurried past, staring at the floor, anticipating a proposition. But she--or he, or whatever it was--merely smiled and said, "Beautiful weather, ain't it, Father?"

Reverend Swensen blinked and then smiled back. "Yes, it is," resisting the urge to add, "my child," which is something he'd never said in all his days as a minister. He settled for, "Have a nice day."

Outside, into the hard streets of the Lower East Side of New York City.

He paused on the sidewalk in front of the hotel as taxis shushed past, young Asians and Latinos hurried by purposefully, buses exhaled hot, metallic fumes and Chine

se delivery boys on battered bicycles zipped over the sidewalk. It was all so very exhausting. Edgy and upset, the reverend decided that a walk to the school where the recital would be held would relax him. He'd consulted the map and knew it was a long way but he needed to do something to bleed off this mad anxiety. He'd do some window shopping, stop for dinner, work on his sermon.

As he oriented himself for the walk he sensed that he was being watched. He glanced to his left, into the alley next to the hotel. A man stood half hidden by a Dumpster, a lean, brown-haired man in overalls, holding a small toolkit. He was looking the priest up and down in a way that seemed purposeful. Then, as if he'd been caught, he turned and receded into the alley.

Reverend Swensen tightened his grip on the attache case, wondering if he'd made a mistake not staying in the safety of his room--foul and noisy though it was--until it was time for the recital. Then he gave a faint laugh. Relax, he told himself. The man had been nothing more than a janitor or handyman, maybe an employee of the hotel itself, surprised to see a minister step out of the sleazy place.

Besides, he reflected as he started walking north, he was a man of the cloth, a calling that surely had to give him some degree of immunity, even here in this modern-day Sodom.

Chapter Twenty-one Here one second, gone the next.

The red ball couldn't possibly get from Kara's outstretched right hand to the spot behind her ear.

But it did.

And after she'd plucked it away and tossed the crimson sphere into the air it couldn't possibly have vanished and ended up inside in the fold of her left elbow.

But it did that too.