Jeffery Deaver - The Vanished Man

Rhyme had met Rose Sachs on several occasions and found her charming, chatty, eccentric and proud of her daughter. But the past, he knew, is nowhere as present as it is between parents and children.

"And how does it work out, her being nearby?" Rhyme asked skeptically.

"Sounds like the sitcom from hell, huh? But, nope, Mum's great, my mom. She's… hey, you know, a mother. They're just a certain way. They never outgrow that."

"Where does she live?"

"She's in a care facility, Upper East Side."

"Is she very sick?"

"Nothing serious. She'll be fine." Kara absently rolled the balls over her knuckles and into her palm. "As soon as she's better we're going to England, just the two of us. London, Stratford, the Cotswolds. My parents and I went there once. It was our best vacation ever. This time I'm going to drive on the left-hand side of the road and drink warm beer. They wouldn't let me the last time. Of course, I was thirteen. You ever been there?"

"Sure. I used to work with Scotland Yard from time to time. And I'd lecture there. I haven't been back since… well, not for a few years."

"Magic and illusion were always more popular in England than here. There's so much history. I want to show Mum where Egyptian Hall was in London. That was the center of the universe for magicians a hundred years ago. Sort of like a pilgrimage for me, you know."

He glanced toward the door. No sign of Thom. "Do me a favor."

"Sure."

"I need some medicine."

Kara noticed some pill bottles against the wall.

"No, over on the bookcase."

"Ah, gotcha. Which one?" she asked.

"The one on the end. Macallan, eighteen years." He whispered, "And probably the quieter you poured it, the better."

"Hey, you're talking to the right person. Robert-Houdin said there were three skills you needed to master to be a successful illusionist. Dexterity, dexterity and dexterity." In a moment a healthy dose of the smokey whisky had been poured into his tumbler – indeed silently and almost invisibly. Thom could've been standing nearby and would never have noticed. She slipped the straw into the cup and fitted it into the holder on his chair.

"Help yourself," he said.

Kara shook her head and gestured toward the coffeepot – which she alone had nearly drained. "That's my poison."

Rhyme sipped the scotch. He tilted his head back and let the burn ease into the back of his mouth then disappear. Watching her hands, the improbable behavior of the red balls. Another long sip. "I like it."

"What?"

"This idea of illusion." Don't get fucking maudlin , he told himself. You get maudlin when you're drunk. But this self-insight didn't stop him from taking another sip of whisky and continuing, "Sometimes reality can be a bit hard to take, you know." Nor could he avoid an unfortunate look down at his motionless body.

Instantly he regretted the comment – and the glance – and he started to change the subject. But Kara didn't offer any canned sympathy. She said, "You know, I'm not sure there is much reality."

He frowned, not getting her meaning.

"Isn't most of our lives an illusion?" she continued.

"How's that?"

"Well, everything in the past is memory, right?"

"True."

"And everything in the future is imagination. Those're both illusions – memories are unreliable and we just speculate about the future. The only thing that's completely real is this one instant of the present – and that's constantly changing from imagination to a memory. So, see? Most of our life's illusory."

Rhyme laughed softly at this. A logician, a scientist, he wanted to poke a hole in her theory. But, he couldn't. She was right, he concluded. He spent much of his time with memories of the Before, prior to the accident, and of how his life had changed after.

And the future? Oh, yes, he often dwelt there. Unknown to almost everyone except Sachs and Thom he spent at least an hour most days exercising – working through manual range-of-motion exercises, doing aqua therapy at a nearby hospital or riding the Electrologic stimulation bicycle tucked away in a bedroom upstairs. This exercise regimen was partly to regain some nerve and motor functions, improve his stamina and prevent the adjunct health problems that can plague quads. But the main reason for his efforts was to keep his muscles in shape for the day when a cure was possible.

He applied Kara's theory to his profession too: working a case, he continually scanned his vast memory banks for knowledge about forensics and past crimes while he anticipated where a suspect might be and what he might do next.

Everything in the past is memory, everything in the future is imagination. …

"Since we've broken the ice," she said, adding sugar to her coffee, "I've got a confession."

Another sip. "Yes?"

"When I saw you for the first time I had this thought."

Oh, yes, he remembered. The Look. The famous escape-from-the-crip look. Served up with the Smile. The only thing worse than that was what now loomed: the ever-so-awkward apology for the Look and the Smile.

She hesitated, embarrassed. Then said, "I thought, what an amazing illusionist you'd be."

"Me?" a surprised Rhyme asked.

Kara nodded. "You're all about perception and reality. People'd look at you and see that you're handicapped… Is that what you say?"

"The politically correct call it 'disabled.' I myself just say that I'm fucked."

Kara laughed and continued, "They see you can't move. They probably think you've got mental problems or you're slow. Right?"

This was true. People who didn't know him often spoke slower and louder, explained the obvious in simple terms. (To Thom's disgust, Rhyme would sometimes respond by muttering incoherently or feigning Tourette's syndrome and driving the horrified visitors out of the room.)

"An audience'd have instant opinions about you and be convinced that you couldn't possibly be behind the illusions they were seeing. Half of them'd be obsessing with your condition. The other half wouldn't even look at you. That's when you'd hook 'em… Anyway, there I was meeting you and you were in this wheelchair and'd obviously gone through a tough time. And I wasn't sympathetic, didn't ask how you were doing. I didn't even say, 'I'm sorry.' I was just thinking, damn, what a performer you'd be. That was pretty crass and I had a feeling you picked up on it."

This delighted him completely. He reassured her, "Believe me, I don't do well with sympathy or kid gloves. Crass scores a lot more points."

"Yeah?"

"Yep."

She lifted her coffee cup. "To the famous illusionist, the Immobilized Man."

"Sleight of hand'd be a bit of a problem," Rhyme pointed out.

Kara replied, "Like Mr. Balzac's always saying, sleight of mind's the better skill."

Then they heard the front door open and the voices of Sachs and Sellitto speaking as they walked into the hallway. Rhyme lifted an eyebrow and leaned for the straw in the tumbler. He whispered, "Watch this. It's a routine I call Vanishing the Incriminating Evidence."

• • •

Lon Sellitto asked, "First of all, do we think he's dead? Sleepin' wit' da fishes?"

Sachs and Rhyme looked at each other and simultaneously said, "No."

The big detective said, "You know how rough that water is in the Harlem? Kids try and swim it and you never see 'em again."

"Bring me his corpse," Rhyme said, "and I'll believe it."

He was encouraged about one thing, though: that they'd had no reports of a homicide or disappearance. The near-capture and the swim in the river had probably spooked the killer; maybe now that he knew the police were close on his trail he'd either give up the attacks or at least go to ground for a while, giving Rhyme and the team a chance to find where he was hiding out.