Jeffery Deaver - The Vanished Man

She remembered the praise she'd received for it. Ah…

Kara stepped forward and embraced him fast, thinking that this was the first physical contact they'd had since she shook his hand when she'd met him eighteen months ago.

He gave her an awkward hug in return and then stepped back.

Kara walked outside, paused and turned to wave but Balzac had vanished into the dim recesses of the store. She slipped the box of silks into her purse and started toward Sixth Avenue, which would take her downtown to her apartment.

The homicide was indeed a weird one.

A double murder in a deserted part of Roosevelt Island – that narrow strip of apartments, hospitals and ghostly ruins in the East River. Since the tramway deposits residents not far from the United Nations in Manhattan many diplomats and U.N. employees live on the island.

And it was two of these individuals – junior emissaries from the Balkans – who'd been found murdered, each shot in the back of the head twice, their hands bound.

There were several curious things that Amelia Sachs had turned up when she'd run the scene. She'd found ash from a type of cigarette that wasn't in the state or federal tobacco database, traces of a plant that wasn't indigenous to the metropolitan area and imprints of a heavy suitcase that had been set down and apparently opened next to the victims after they'd been shot.

And strangest of all was the fact that each man was missing his right shoe. They were nowhere to be found. "Both of them the right shoe, Sachs," Rhyme said, looking at the evidence board, in front of which he sat and she paced. "What do we make of that?"

But the question was put on hold temporarily by Sachs's ringing cell phone. It was Captain Marlow's secretary, asking if she could come down to a meeting at his office. Several days had passed since they'd closed the Conjurer case, several days since she learned about Victor Ramos's action against her. There'd been no further word about the suspension.

"When?" Sachs asked.

"Well, now," the woman replied.

Sachs disconnected and, with a glance and tight-lipped smile toward Rhyme, she said, "This's it. Gotta go."

They held each other's eyes for a moment. Then Rhyme nodded and she headed for the door.

A half hour later Sachs was in Captain Gerald Marlow's office, sitting across from the man, who was reading one of his ever-present manila files. "One second, Officer." He continued reviewing whatever so absorbed him, jotting occasional notes.

She fidgeted. Picking at a cuticle, then at a nail. Two grass-growing minutes went by. Oh, Jesus Christ , she thought and finally asked, "Okay, sir. What's the story? Did he back down?"

Marlow marked a spot on the sheet he was reading and looked up. "Who?"

"Ramos. About the sergeant's exam?"

And that other vindictive prick – the lecherous cop from the assessment exercise.

"Back down?" Marlow asked. He was surprised at her naiveté. "Well, Officer, that was never an option, him backing down."

So that left only one reason for a face-to-face – an understanding that came to her with the sharp clarity of the first pistol shot at an outdoor range. That first shot… before your muscles and ears and skin grow numb from the repeated fire. Only one reason for her to be summoned here. Marlow was going to take possession of her weapon and her shield. She was now suspended.

Shitshitshit…

She bit the inside of her lip.

Easing the folder closed, Marlow looked at her in a fatherly way, which unnerved her; it was as if the punishment to which she'd been sentenced was so severe that she needed the buffer zone of paternal kindness. "People like Ramos, Officer, you're not going to beat 'em. Not on their turf. You won the battle, cuffing him at the scene. But he won the war. People like that always win the war."

"You mean stupid people? Petty people? Greedy people?"

Once again the genetic makeup of a career police officer stopped him from even acknowledging the question.

"Look at this desk," he said as he did just that. It was awash in paper. Stacks and piles of folders and memos. "And I remember when I used to complain about all the paperwork when I was a portable." He rummaged through one of the stacks, apparently looking for something. Gave up. Tried another pile. He came up with several documents that weren't what he wanted either and took his own sweet time reorganizing them then resuming the search again.

Oh, Pop, I never thought a suspension'd really go through.

Then, within her, the sorrow and disappointment formed into a rock. And she thought: Okay, that's the way they're going to play? Maybe I'm going down but they'll hurt. Ramos and all the little prick Ramoses like him're are going to lick blood.

Knuckle time…

"Right," the captain said, finally finding what he wanted, a large envelope with a piece of paper stapled to it. He read it quickly. Glanced at a clock in the shape of a ship's wheel on his desk. "Darn, look at the time. Let's get on with it, Officer. Let me have your shield."

Heartsick, she dug dutifully into her pocket. "How long?"

"A year, Officer," Marlow said. "Sorry."

Suspended for a year, she thought in despair. She'd imagined three months at the worst.

"That's the best I could do. A year. Shield, I was asking." Marlow shook his head. "Sorry for the rush. I've got another meeting any minute now. Meetings – they drive me crazy. This one's about insurance. The public thinks all we do is catch perps. Or thinks we don't catch perps, more likely. Uhn-uhn – half the job is business bushwah. You know what my father called business? 'Busy-ness.' He worked for American Standard for thirty-nine years. Sales rep. B-U-S-Y-ness. True about our job too." He held out his hand.

Dismay pooling around her, drowning her, she handed him the battered leather case containing the silver shield and ID card.

Badge Number Five Eight Eight Five…

What could she do? Be a fucking security guard?

Behind him the captain's phone rang and he spun around to answer it.

"Marlow here… Yessir… We've got security arranged for that." And as he continued to talk to the caller, something about the Andrew Constable trial, it seemed, the captain placed the interoffice envelope in his lap.

He pinched the phone in the crook of his neck, turned back to face Sachs and continued his conversation as he unwound the red thread that was twisted around the clasps to keep the envelope sealed.

Droning on about the trial, the new charges against Constable and others in the Patriot Assembly, raids up in Canton Falls. Sachs noted the man's perfectly nuanced, respectful tone, how he played the deference game so perfectly. Maybe he was talking to the mayor or governor.

Maybe Congressman Ramos.

Playing the game, playing politics… Is this what police work is really about? It was so far from her nature that she wondered if she had any business being a cop.

No busy-ness.

That thought tore her apart. Oh, Rhyme. What're we going to do?

We'll get through it , he'd said. But life isn't about getting through. Getting through is losing.

Marlow, still pinching the phone between ear and shoulder, was rambling on and on in the language of government. He finally got the envelope opened and dropped her shield into it.

He then reached in and extracted something wrapped in tissue paper.

"… don't have time for a ceremony. We'll do something later." This latter message was whispered and it seemed to Sachs he was speaking to her.

Ceremony?

A glance at her. Now another whisper, his hand over the receiver. "This insurance stuff. Who understands it? I've got to learn all about mortality tables, annuities, double indemnity…"