Jeffery Deaver - The Vanished Man

What would they make of that?

Was there other tainted candy?

Or was this misdirection – to lead them away from Manhattan Detention, where Malerick might be planning some other way to break Constable out?

In short, the police too would be floating in a soup of confusion, having no idea what was actually going on.

Well, what's been going on for the past two days, Revered Audience, is a sublime performance featuring the perfect combination of physical and psychological misdirection.

Physical – by directing the attention of the police toward both Charles Grady's apartment and the detention center.

Psychological – by shifting suspicion away from what Malerick was really doing and toward the very credible motive that Lincoln Rhyme proudly believed he'd figured out: the hired killing of Grady and the orchestration of Andrew Constable's escape. Once the police had deduced that, their minds stopped looking for any other explanation as to what he was really up to.

Which had absolutely nothing to do with the Constable case. All of the clues he'd left so obviously – the illusionist-trick attacks on the first three victims, who represented aspects of the circus, the shoe with the dog hairs and dirt ground into it leading to Central Park, the references to the fire in Ohio and the connection with the Cirque Fantastique… all of those had convinced the police that his intent couldn't really be revenge against Kadesky because that, as Lincoln Rhyme had told him, was too obvious. He had to be up to something else.

But he wasn't.

Now, dressed in a medical technician's uniform, he eased the ambulance he was driving through the service entrance of the tent housing the World Renowned Internationally Heralded Critically Acclaimed Cirque Fantastique.

He parked under the box seats scaffolding, climbed out and locked the door. None of the stagehands, police or the many security guards paid any attention to him or the ambulance. After the bomb scare earlier in the day, it was perfectly normal for an emergency vehicle to be parked here – perfectly natural , an illusionist would note.

Look, Revered Audience, here is your illusionist, center stage yet completely invisible.

He's the Vanished Man, present but unseen.

No one even glanced at the vehicle, which wasn't an ordinary ambulance at all, but a feke. In place of medical equipment it now held a dozen plastic drums containing a total of seven hundred gallons of gasoline, attached to a simple detonation device, which would soon spark the liquid to life, sending the deadly flood erupting into the bleachers, into the canvas, into the audience of more than two thousand people.

Among whom would be Edward Kadesky.

See, Mr. Rhyme, when we talked before? My words were just patter. Kadesky and the Cirque Fantastique destroyed my life and my love and I'm going to destroy him. Revenge is what this is all about.

Ignored by everyone, the illusionist now walked casually out of the tent and into Central Park. He'd change out of the medical worker's uniform and into a new disguise and would return under cover of night, becoming, for a change, a member of the audience himself and finding a good vantage spot to enjoy the finale of his show.

Families, clusters of friends, couples, children were slowly entering the tent, finding their seats, filling in the bleachers and box seats, slowly changing from individuals into that creature called an audience, the whole becoming very different from the parts.

Metamorphosis…

Kara turned away from the sight and stopped a security guard. "I've been waiting for a while. You have any idea when Mr. Kadesky'll be back? It's really important."

No, he didn't know and neither did the two other people she asked.

Another glance at her watch. She felt heartsick. An image came to her of her mother, lying in the Stuyvesant home, looking around the room, pierced with clarity and wondering where her daughter was. Kara wanted to cry in frustration at being trapped here. Knowing that she had to stay, do what she could to stop Weir, yet wanting so desperately to be at her mother's side.

She turned back to the brightly lit interior of the huge circus tent. Performers waited in the wings, getting ready for the opening act, wearing their eerie commedia dell'arte masks. The kids in the audience were wearing the face gear too, overpriced souvenirs from the stands outside. Pug and hooked noses, beaks.

They gazed around, mostly excited and giddy. But some were uneasy, she could see. The masks and otherworldly decorations probably made the circus seem to them like a scene from a horror movie.

Kara loved performing for children but she knew that you had to be careful; their reality was different from adults' and an illusionist could easily destroy youngsters' shaky sense of comfort. She only did funny illusions in her young children's shows and would often gather the kids around her afterward and tip the gaff.

Looking at all the magic around her, feeling the excitement, the anticipation… Her palms were sweating as if she herself were about to go on. Oh, what she wouldn't give to be standing in the prep tent right now. Content, confident, yet wired, feeling the accelerating heartbeat of anticipation as the clock ticked toward show time. There was no sensation like that in the world.

She laughed sadly to herself. Well, here she'd made it to Cirque Fantastique.

But as an errand girl.

She wondered now, Am I good enough? Despite what David Balzac said, sometimes she believed she was. At least as good as, say, Harry Houdini during his early shows – the only escapism at those had been the audience members who snuck out of the halls, bored or embarrassed to watch him flub simple sleights. Robert-Houdin was so uncomfortable in his initial performances that he ended up offering the audience clockwork automatons like a wind-up Turk who played chess.

But as she gazed backstage, at the hundreds of performers who'd been in the business since childhood, Balzac's firm voice looped through her mind: Not yet, not yet, not yet… She heard these words with both disappointment yet comfort. He was right, she decided with finality. He was the expert, she was the apprentice. She had to have confidence in him. A year or two. The wait would be worth it.

Besides, there was her mother…

Who was maybe sitting up in bed right now, chatting with Jaynene, wondering where her daughter was – the daughter who'd abandoned her on the one night when she should've been there.

Kadesky's assistant, Katherine Tunney, appeared at the top of the stairs and gestured toward her.

Was Kadesky here? Please. …

But the woman said, "He just called. He had a radio interview after dinner and he's running late. He'll be here soon. That's his box in the front. Why don't you wait there?"

Kara nodded and, discouraged, walked to the seat Katherine indicated, sat down and gazed back at the tent. She saw that the magic transformation was finally complete; every seat was filled. The children, the men, the women were now an audience.

Thud.

Kara jumped as a loud, hollow drum resonated through the tent.

The lights went down, extinguished completely, plunging them into a darkness broken only by the red exit lights.

Thud.

The crowd was instantly silent.

Thud… thud… thud.

The drumbeat sounded slowly. You could feel it in your chest.

Thud… thud…

A brilliant spotlight shot into the center of the ring, illuminating the actor playing Arlecchino, dressed in his black-and-white-checkered bodysuit, wearing his matching half mask. Holding a long scepter high in the air, he looked around mischievously.