Jeffery Deaver - The Vanished Man

"I heard screams," Loesser whispered.

"Oh, that was Kara's idea. She thought we could have Kadesky tell the audience they were taking an intermission from the show so a movie studio could shoot a scene in the tent – about a fire in a circus. He had everybody start screaming on cue. They loved it. They got to be extras."

"No," the Conjurer whispered. "It was -"

"- an illusion," Rhyme said to him. "It was all an illusion." Some sleight of mind from the Immobilized Man.

"I better run the scene here," Sachs said, nodding around the room, and frowning.

"Sure, sure, Sachs. What was I thinking of? Here we are sitting around chatting and contaminating a crime scene."

With multiple cuffs and shackles binding him and an officer on either side, the killer was led out the door, far less cocky than the last time he'd been led down to detention.

As two ESU officers were about to schlepp Rhyme outside once more, Lon Sellitto's phone rang. He took the call. "She's right here…" A glance at Sachs. "You want to talk to her…?" Then he shook his head at her and continued to listen, looking grave. "Okay, I'll tell her." He hung up.

"That was Marlow," he said to Sachs.

The head of Patrol Services. What was up? the criminalist wondered, seeing the troubled look on Sellitto's face.

The rumpled detective continued, speaking to Sachs, "He wants you downtown tomorrow at ten A. M. It's about your promotion." Sellitto then frowned. "There was something else he wanted me to tell you, something about your score on the test. What was it?" He shook his head, stared at the ceiling. Clearly troubled. "What was it?"

Sachs looked on impassively, though Rhyme observed a fingernail make a brief assault on the cuticle of her thumb.

Then the detective snapped his fingers. "Oh, yeah, now I remember. He said you got the third highest score in the history of the department." A frown filled his face and he looked at Rhyme. "You know what this means, don'tcha? Christ have mercy – now there'll be no living with her."

• • •

Jogging, breathless.

The corridor was a mile long.

Kara sprinted along the gray linoleum with only one thing in her mind: not the late Erick Weir or his psychotic assistant, Art Loesser, not the brilliance of the fire illusion at the Cirque Fantastique. No, all she thought was: Am I in time?

Down the dim corridor. Footsteps pounding on the floor.

Past doorways closed and doorways open. Hearing bits of TV and music, hearing farewell conversation as families prepared to leave at the end of Sunday visiting hours.

Hearing her own hollow footsteps.

She paused outside the room. Inhaled a dozen deep breaths to steady her voice and, more nervous than she'd ever been going onstage, stepped into the room.

A pause. Then: "Hi, Mum."

Her mother turned away from the TV. She blinked in surprise and smiled. "Why, look who it is. Hello, dear."

Oh, my God , Kara thought, looking at the bright eyes. She's back! She's really back.

She walked over and hugged the woman then pulled the chair closer. "How are you?"

"Fine. Little chilly tonight."

"I'll close the window." Kara rose and pulled it shut. "I thought you weren't going to make it, honey."

"Busy night. I'll have to tell you what I've been up to, Mum. You won't believe it."

"I can't wait."

Excitedly Kara asked, "You want some tea or something?" She felt a fierce urgency to pour out all the details of her life in the past six months, to ramble. But she told herself to slow down; gushing, she sensed, could easily overwhelm her mother, who seemed immensely fragile at the moment.

"Nope, not a thing, dear… Could you shut the TV off? I'd rather visit with you. There's that control. I can never get it to work. Sometimes, I almost think, somebody sneaks in and changes the buttons."

"I'm glad I got here before you went to bed."

"I would've stayed up to visit with you."

Kara gave her a smile. Her mother then said, "I was just thinking about your uncle, honey. My brother."

Kara nodded. Her mother's late brother was the black sheep of the family. He'd gone out west when Kara was young and never kept in touch with the family.

Kara's mother and grandparents had refused to talk about him and his name was verboten at family gatherings. But, of course, the rumors flew: he was gay, he was straight and married but he'd had an affair with a Roma gypsy, he'd shot a man over another woman, he'd never married and was an alcoholic jazz musician…

Kara'd always wanted to learn the truth about him. "What about him, Mum?"

"You want to hear?"

"Oh, you bet – tell me some stories," she now asked, leaning forward and resting her hand on the woman's arm.

"Well, let's see, when would it've been? I'd guess May of seventy, maybe seventy-one. Not sure of the year – that's my mind for you – but I know it was May. Your uncle and some of his army buddies had come back from Vietnam."

"He was a soldier? I never knew that."

"Oh, he looked very handsome in his uniform. Well, they had a terrible time over there." Her voice grew serious. "Your uncle's best friend was killed right next to him. Died in his arms. A big black fellow. Well, Tom and another soldier got it into their heads that they'd like to start a business to help their dead friend's family. So what they did was they went down south and bought a boat. Can you imagine your uncle on a boat? I thought it was the strangest thing ever. They started a shrimp business. Tom made a fortune."

"Mum," Kara said softly.

Her mother smiled at some memory and shook her head. "A boat… Well, the company was very successful. And people were surprised because, well, Tom never seemed too bright." Her mother's eyes sparkled. "But you know what he used to say to them?"

"What, Mum?"

"'Stupid is as stupid does.'"

"That's a good expression," Kara whispered.

"Oh, you would've loved that man, Jenny. Did you know he met the president of the United States once. And played Ping-Pong in China."

Not noticing her daughter's quiet crying, the old woman continued to tell Kara the rest of the story of Forrest Gump , the movie that she'd been watching on TV a few moments before. Kara's uncle's name was Gil but in her mother's fantasy he was Tom – presumably after the film's star, Tom Hanks. Kara herself had become Jenny, Forrest's girlfriend.

No, no, no , Kara thought in despair, I didn't make it in time after all.

Her mother's soul had come and gone, leaving in its place only illusion.

The woman's narrative became a garbled stream that moved from the shrimp boat in the Gulf to a swordfish boat in the North Atlantic caught in something called a "perfect storm" to an ocean liner sinking while her brother, in tuxedo, played the violin on deck. Thoughts, memories and images from a dozen other movies or books joined real memories. Soon Kara's "uncle," as well as all semblance of coherence, vanished completely.

"It's somewhere outside," the old woman said with finality. "I know it's outside." She closed her eyes.

Kara sat forward in her chair, gently resting her hand on her mother's smooth arm until the old woman was asleep. Thinking: But she had been in her right mind earlier. Jaynene wouldn't've paged her if she hadn't.

And if it happened once , she thought defiantly, it could happen again.

Finally Kara rose and walked out into the dark corridor, reflecting that, as talented a performer as she might be, she lacked the one skill she so desperately wanted: to magically transport her mother to that place where hearts stoked with the fuel of affection burn warmly for all the years God assigned them. Where minds retain perfectly every chapter in the rich histories of families. Where the apparent gulfs between loved ones turn out to be, in the end, nothing more than effects – temporary illusions.