Jeffery Deaver - The Vanished Man

Kara continued, rocking forward excitedly and telling her mother in an animated way about what she planned for tomorrow. As she spoke she studied her mother closely, the skin oddly smooth for a woman in her mid-seventies and as healthy pink as a crying baby's, hair mostly gray but with plenty of defiant wiry black strands scattered throughout. The staff beautician had done it up in a stylish bun. "Anyway, Mum, some friends'll be there and it'd be great if you could come too."

"I'll try."

Kara, now sitting on the very edge of the armchair, realized suddenly that her fists were clenched, her body a knot of tension. Her breath was coming in shallow sibilant gasps.

I'll try…

Kara closed her eyes, filling with slivers of tears. Goddamnit!

I'll try…

No, no, no, that's all wrong , she thought angrily. Her mother wouldn't say, "I'll try." That wasn't her sort of dialogue. It might be: "I'll be there, hons. In the first row." Or she'd say frostily, "Well, I can't tomorrow. You should've let me know earlier."

Whatever else about her mother, there was nothing I'll-try about her. Balls-out for you, or hell-to-pay against.

Except now – when the woman was hardly a human being at all. At most a child, sleeping with her eyes open.

The conversation Kara had just had with the woman had occurred only in the girl's hopeful imagination. Well, Kara's portion had been real. But her mother's, from the Just fine, darling. And how's life treating you? to the glitch of I'll try , had been ginned up by Kara herself.

No, her mother hadn't said a single word today. Or during yesterday's visit. Or the one before. She'd lain beside the ivy window in some kind of waking coma. Some days she was like that. On others, the woman might be fully awake but babbling scary nonsense that only attested to the success of the invisible army moving relentlessly through her brain, torching memory and reason.

But there was a more pernicious part of the tragedy. Once in a rare while, there'd be a fragile moment of clarity, which, brief though it was, perfectly negated her despair. Just when Kara had come to accept the worst – that the mother she knew was gone forever – the woman would return, just like in the days before the cerebral hemorrhage. And Kara's defenses vanished, the same way an abused woman forgives her slugging husband at the slightest hint of contrition. At moments like that she'd convince herself that her mother was improving.

The doctors said that there was virtually no hope for this, of course. Still, the doctors hadn't been at her mother's bedside when, several months ago, the woman woke up and turned suddenly to Kara. "Hi there, hons. I ate those cookies you brought me yesterday. You put in extra pecans the way I like them. And heck with the calories." A girlish smile. "Oh, I'm glad you're here. I wanted to tell you what Mrs. Brandon did last night. With the remote control."

Kara had blinked, stunned. Because, damn, she had brought her mother pecan sandies the day before and had stocked them with extra nuts. And, yes, crazy Mrs. Brandon from the fifth floor had copped a remote and bounced the signal off the windows next door into the nursing home's lounge, confounding the residents for a half hour by changing channels and volume like a poltergeist.

There! Who needed better evidence than this that her vibrant mother, her real mother remained within the injured shell of a body and could someday escape.

But the next day Kara had found the woman staring at her daughter suspiciously, asking why she was there and what she wanted. If this was about the electric bill for twenty-two dollars and fifteen cents she'd paid it and had the canceled check for proof. Since the pecan-sandy remote-control performance there'd been no encores.

Kara now touched her mother's arm, warm, wrinkle-free, baby pink. Sensing what she always did here on her daily visits: the numbing trilogy of wishing that the woman would mercifully die, wishing that she'd come back to her vibrant life – and wishing that Kara herself could escape from the terrible burden of wanting both of those irreconcilable choices.

A glance at her watch. Late for work, as always. Mr. Balzac would not be happy. Saturday was their busiest day. She drained the coffee cup, pitched it out and walked into the hallway.

A large black woman in a white uniform lifted a hand in greeting. "Kara! How long you been here?" A broad smile in a broad face.

"Twenty minutes."

"I would've come by and visited," Jaynene said. "She still awake?"

"No. She was out when I got here."

"Oh, I'm sorry."

"Was she talking before?" Kara asked.

"Yep. Just little things. Couldn't tell if she was with us or not. Seemed like it… This is some gorgeous day, hm? Sephie and me, we're gonna take her walking in the courtyard later if she's awake. She likes it. She always does better after that."

"I've gotta get to work," Kara told the nurse. "Hey, I'm doing a show tomorrow. At the store. Remember where it is?"

"Sure do. What time?"

"Four. Come on by."

"I'm off early tomorrow. I'll be there. We'll drink some more of those peach margaritas after. Like last time."

"That'll work," Kara replied. "Hey, bring Pete."

The woman scowled. "Girl, nothing personal, but th'only way that man'll see you on Sunday is if you're playing the halftime show for the Knicks or the Lakers an' it's on network TV."

Kara said, "From your mouth to God's ear."

One hundred years ago a moderately successful financier might've called this place home.

Or the owner of a small haberdashery in the luxurious shopping neighborhood of Fourteenth Street.

Or possibly a politician connected with Tammany Hall, savvy in the timeless art of growing rich through public office.

The present owner of the Central Park West townhouse, however, didn't know, or care, about its provenance. Nor would the Victorian furnishings or subdued fin de siècle objets d'art that had once graced these rooms appeal to Lincoln Rhyme at all. He enjoyed what surrounded him now: a disarray of sturdy tables, swivel stools, computers, scientific devices – a density gradient rack, a gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer, microscopes, plastic boxes in myriad colors, beakers, jars, thermometers, propane tanks, goggles, latched black or gray cases of odd shapes, which suggested they contained esoteric musical instruments.

And wires.

Wires and cables everywhere, covering much of the limited square footage of the room, some tidily coiled and connecting adjacent pieces of machinery, some disappearing through ragged holes shamefully cut into the hard-earned smoothness of century-old plaster-and-lath walls.

Lincoln Rhyme himself was largely wireless now. Advances in infrared and radio technology had linked a microphone on his wheelchair – and on his bed upstairs – to environmental control units and computers. He drove his Storm Arrow with his left ring finger on an MKIV touchpad but all the other commands, from phone calls to email to slapping the image from his compound microscope onto computer monitors, could be accomplished by using his voice.

It could also control his new Harmon Kardon 8000 receiver, which was currently piping a pleasant jazz solo through the lab.

"Control, stereo off," Rhyme reluctantly ordered, hearing the front door slam.

The music went silent, replaced by the erratic beat of footsteps in the front hall and the parlor. One of the visitors was Amelia Sachs, he knew; for a tall woman she had a decidedly light footfall. Then he heard the distinctive clump of Lon Sellitto's big, perpetually out-turned feet.

"Sachs," he muttered as she entered the room, "was it a big scene? Was it huge?"