Jeffery Deaver - The Vanished Man

It can be time-consuming to push aside the pins one at a time, though, so Malerick had mastered a very difficult technique called "scrubbing," in which you move the pick back and forth quickly, brushing the pins out of the way.

Scrubbing only works when the lock-picker senses exactly the right combination of torque on the cylinder and pressure on the pins. Using tools that were only a few inches long, it had taken Malerick less than thirty seconds to scrub open the locks in both the back door and the apartment door of Calvert's place.

Does that seem impossible, Revered Audience?

But that's the job of illusionists, you know: rendering the impossible real.

Pausing outside the subway he bought a New York Times and flipped through it as he studied passersby. Again, it seemed that no one had followed him. He trotted down the stairs to catch the train. A truly cautious performer might have waited a bit longer to be absolutely sure he wasn't being tailed. But Malerick didn't have much time. The next routine would be a difficult one – he'd set quite major challenges for himself – and he had to make some preparations.

He didn't dare risk disappointing his audience.

"It's bad, Rhyme."

Amelia Sachs was speaking into the stalk mike as she stood in the doorway of apartment 1J, in the heart of Alphabet City.

Earlier that morning Lon Sellitto had ordered all dispatchers at Central to call him immediately with news of any homicide in New York City. When a report came in about this particular killing they concluded that it was the work of the Conjurer: the mysterious way the killer had gained access to the man's apartment was one clue. The clincher, though, was that he'd smashed the victim's wristwatch – just as he'd done with the student's at the first killing that morning.

One thing that was different was the cause of death. Which had prompted Sachs's comment to Rhyme. While Sellitto gave commands to the detectives and patrol officers in the hall Sachs studied the unfortunate vic – a young man named Anthony Calvert. He lay on his back in the middle of the coffee table in the living room, spread-eagled, hands and feet tied to the legs of the table. His abdomen had been sawn completely through down to his spine.

Sachs now described the injury to Rhyme.

"Well," said the criminalist unemotionally. "Consistent."

"Consistent?"

"I'd say he's keeping with the magic theme. Ropes in the first killing. Cutting someone in half now." His voice rose as he called across the room, presumably to Kara. "That's a magic trick, right? Cutting somebody in half?" A pause and then he was addressing Sachs again. "She said it's a classic illusionist trick."

He was right, she realized; she'd been shocked at the sight and hadn't made the connection between the two killings.

An illusionist trick…

Though grotesque mutilation described it better.

Keep detached , she told herself. A sergeant would be detached.

But then a thought occurred to her. "Rhyme, you think…"

"What?"

"You think he was alive when the perp started cutting? His hands're tied to the table legs, spread-eagle."

"Oh, you mean maybe he left something for us, some clue about the killer's identity? Good."

"No," she said softly. "Thinking about the pain."

"Oh. That."

Oh. That…

"Blood work'll tell."

Then she noticed a major blunt-object trauma to Calvert's temple. That wound hadn't bled much, which suggested that his heart had stopped beating soon after the skull had been crushed.

"No, Rhyme, looks like the cutting was postmortem."

She vaguely heard the criminalist's voice talking to his aide, telling Thom to write this on the evidence chart. He was saying something else but she wasn't paying any attention. The sight of the victim gripped her hard and wouldn't let go. But this was as she wanted it. Yes, she could give up the dead – the way all crime-scene cops had to do – and in a moment she would. But death, she felt, deserved a moment of stillness. Sachs did this not out of any sense of spirituality, though, or abstract respect for the dead; no, it was for herself, so that her heart would resist hardening to stone, a process that happened all too frequently in this calling.

She realized that Rhyme was talking to her. "What?" she asked.

"I was wondering, any weapons?"

"No sign of them. But I haven't searched yet."

A sergeant and a uniformed officer joined Sellitto in the doorway. "Been talking to the neighbors," one of them said. Nodding toward the body then doing a double take. She guessed he hadn't seen the carnage up-close yet.

"Vic was a nice, quiet guy. Everybody liked him. Gay but not into rough trade or anything. Hadn't been seeing anybody for a while."

Sachs nodded then said into her mike, "Doesn't sound like he knew the killer, Rhyme."

"We didn't think that was likely now, did we?" the criminalist said. "The Conjurer's got a different agenda – whatever the hell it is."

"What line of work?" she asked the officers.

"Makeup artist and stylist for one of the theaters on Broadway. We found his case in the alley. You know, hair spray, makeup, brushes."

Sachs wondered if Calvert had ever been hired by commercial photographers and, if so, if he'd worked on her when she'd been with the Chantelle modeling agency on Madison Avenue. Unlike many photographers and the ad agency account people, makeup artists treated models as if they were human beings. An account exec might offer, "All right, let's get her painted and see what she looks like," and the makeup artist would mutter, "Excuse me, I didn't know she was a picket fence."

An Asian-American detective from the Ninth Precinct, which covered this part of town, walked up to the doorway, hanging up his cell phone. "How 'bout this one, huh?" he asked breezily.

"How 'bout it," Sellitto muttered. "Any idea how he got away? The vic called nine-one-one himself. Your respondings must've got to the scene in ten minutes."

"Six," the detective said.

A sergeant said, "We rolled up silent and covered all the doors and windows. When we got inside, the body was still warm. I'm talking ninety-eight point six. We did a door-to-door but no sign of the doer."

"Wits?"

The sergeant nodded. "The only person in the hall when we got here was this old lady. She was the one let us in. When she gets back we'll talk to her. Maybe she got a look at him."

"She left?" Sellitto asked.

"Yeah."

Rhyme had heard. "You know who it was, don't you?"

"Goddamn," the policewoman snapped.

The detective said, "No, it's okay. We left cards under everybody's door. She'll call us back."

"No, she won't," Sachs said, sighing. "That was the doer."

"Her?" the sergeant asked, his voice high. He laughed.

"She wasn't a her," Sachs explained. "She only looked like an old lady."

"Hey, Officer," Sellitto said, "let's not get too paranoid. The guy can't do a sex-change operation or anything."

"Yes, he can. Remember what Kara told us. It was her, Lieutenant. Want to bet?"

In her ear Rhyme's voice said, "I'm not taking odds on that one, Sachs."

The sergeant said defensively, "She was, like, seventy years old or something. And carrying a big bag of groceries. A pineapple – "

"Look," she said and pointed to the kitchen counter, on which were two spiky leaves. Next to them was a little card on a rubber band, courtesy of Dole, offering tasty recipes for fresh pineapple.

Hell. They'd had him – he was inches away from them.

"And," Rhyme continued, "he probably had the murder weapon in the grocery bag."

She repeated this to the increasingly sullen detective from the Nine.