Jeffery Deaver - The Vanished Man

"No idea." Kadesky shook his head. "I shouldn't've hired him. But if you'd ever seen his show, you'd understand. He was the best. The audiences may have been terrified, they may have been, well, abused, but they bought tickets to see him. And you should've heard the ovations." The producer looked at his watch. The time was 1:45. "You know, my show starts in fifteen minutes… I think it'd be a good idea to get a few more police cars over there. With Weir around and everything that happened between us."

"Over where?" Rhyme asked.

"To my show."

He nodded toward Central Park. "That's yours? The Cirque Fantastique?"

"Right. I assumed you knew that. You had the police car parked there… You do know that Cirque Fantastique is the old Hasbro and Keller Brothers circus."

"What?" Sellitto asked.

Rhyme glanced at Kara, who was shaking her head. "Mr. Balzac never told me that when I called him last night."

"After the fire," Kadesky said, "we retooled. Cirque du Soleil was having so much success I recommended to Sid Keller that we do what they were. When we got the insurance money we started Fantastique."

"No, no, no," Rhyme whispered, staring at the evidence charts.

"What, Linc?" Sellitto asked.

" That's what Weir's doing here," he announced. "Your show's his target. Cirque Fantastique."

"What?"

Scanning the evidence again. Applying facts to the premise.

Rhyme nodded. "Dogs!"

"What?" Sachs asked.

"Goddamn dogs! Look at the chart. Look at it! The animal hairs and Central Park dirt're from the dog knoll! Right outside the window." A fierce nod toward the front of his townhouse. "He wasn't checking out Cheryl Marston on the bridle path; he was checking out the circus. The newspaper, the one in his Mazda – look at that headline: 'Entertainment for Kids Young and Old.' Call up the paper – see if there's information about the circus in it. Thom – call Peter! Hurry."

The aide was good friends with a reporter for the Times , a young man who'd helped them occasionally in the past. He grabbed the phone and placed the call.

Peter Hoddins worked the International desk but it took him less than a minute to find the answer. He relayed the information to Thom, who announced, "The circus was the feature of the story. All sorts of details – hours, acts, bios of the employees. Even a sidebar on security."

"Shit," Rhyme snapped. "He was doing his research… And the press pass? That'd give him access to backstage." Rhyme was squinting as he looked at the evidence chart. "Yes! I get it now. The victims. What did they represent? Jobs in the circus. A makeup artist. A horseback rider… And the first victim! Yes, she was a student but what was her job? Singing and entertaining kids – like a clown'd do."

"And the murder techniques themselves," Sachs pointed out. "They were all magic tricks."

"Yep. He's after your show. Terry Dobyns said his motive was ultimately revenge. Hell, he's planted a fuel bomb."

"My God," Kadesky said. "There're two thousand people there! And the show's starting in ten minutes."

At two in the afternoon…

"The Sunday matinee," Rhyme added. "Just like in Ohio three years ago."

Sellitto grabbed his Motorola and called the officers stationed at the circus.

There was no answer. The detective frowned and placed a call on Rhyme's speakerphone.

"Officer Koslowski here," the man answered a moment later.

Sellitto identified himself and barked, "Why isn't your radio on, Officer?"

"Radio? Well, we're off duty, Lieutenant."

"Off duty? You just went on duty."

"Well, Detective, we were told to stand down."

"You were what? "

"Some detective came by a half hour ago and told us we weren't needed anymore. Said we could take the rest of the day off. I'm on my way to Rock-away Beach with my family. I can -"

"Describe him."

"Fifties. Beard, brown hair."

"Where'd he go?"

"No idea. Walked up to the car, flashed his shield and dismissed us."

Sellitto slammed the disconnect. "It's happening… Oh, man, it's happening." He shouted to Sachs, "Call the Sixth, get the Bomb Squad there."

Then he himself called Central and had Emergency Services and fire trucks sent to the circus.

Kadesky ran toward the door. "I'll evacuate the tent."

Bell said he was calling Emergency Medical Services and having burn teams established at Columbia Presbyterian.

"I want more soft-clothed in the park," Rhyme said. "A lot of them. I have a feeling the Conjurer's going to be there."

"Be there?" Sellitto asked.

"To watch the fire. He'll be close. I remember his eyes when he was looking at the flames in my room. He likes to watch fire. No, he wouldn't miss this for the world."

He wasn't worried so much about the fire itself.

As Edward Kadesky sprinted the short distance from Lincoln Rhyme's apartment to the tent of the Cirque Fantastique he was thinking that with new codes and fire retardants, even the worst theater and circus tent fires proceed fairly slowly.

No, the real danger is the panic, the tons of human muscles, the stampede that tramples and tears and crushes and suffocates. Bones broken, lungs burst, asphyxiation…

Saving people in a circus disaster means getting them out of the facility without panic. Traditionally, to alert the clowns and acrobats and other hands that a fire has broken out the ringmaster would send a subtle signal to the bandleader, who then launched into the energetic John Philip Sousa march, "Stars and Stripes Forever." The workers were supposed to take up emergency stations and calmly lead the audience through designated exits (those employees who didn't simply, of course, abandon ship themselves).

The tune had been replaced over the years by far more efficient procedures for the evacuation of a circus tent. But if a gas bomb detonated, spreading burning liquid everywhere?

The crowd would sprint to the exits and a thousand people would die in the crush.

Edward Kadesky ran into the tent and saw twenty-six hundred people eagerly awaiting the opening of his show.

His show.

That was what he thought. The show he'd created. Kadesky had been a hawker in sideshows, a curtain bitch at second-tier theaters in third-tier cities, a payroll manager and ticket seller in sweaty regional circuses. He'd struggled for years to bring to the public shows that transcended the tawdry side of the business, the carny aspect of circuses. He'd done it once, with the Hasbro and Keller Brothers show – which Erick Weir had destroyed. Then he'd done it again with Cirque Fantastique, a world-renowned show that brought legitimacy, even prestige, to a profession that was so often disparaged by those who attended theater and opera, and ignored by those who watched E! and MTV.

Remembering the wave of searing heat from the Hasbro tent fire in Ohio. The flecks of ash like deadly, gray snow. The howl of the flames – the astonishing noise – as his show had lumbered to its death right in front of him.

There was one difference, though: three years ago the tent had been empty. Today thousands of men, women and children would be in the middle of the conflagration.

Kadesky's assistant, Katherine Tunney, a young brunette who'd risen high in the Disney theme park organization before coming to work with him, noticed his troubled gaze and instantly joined him. That was one of Katherine's big talents: sensing his thoughts almost telepathically. "What?" she whispered.

He told her what he'd learned from Lincoln Rhyme and the police. Her eyes began to sweep the circus tent, just like his, looking both for the bomb and at the victims.

"How do we handle it?" she asked tersely.